Amazon · SpaceX · Elon Musk · Ars Technica
Payloads leveraged to dictate the terms of launch
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It wasn’t easy to find anyone outside of SpaceX clamoring for a rocket like Starship 10 years ago.
Key facts
- This would bring the per-kilogram launch cost for a fully loaded Starship down to $133 to $233 after 10 reuse cycles
- A more optimistic scenario with a $50 million initial launch cost and 20 percent marginal cost would reduce payload costs to $67 per kilogram for a Starship/Super Heavy launch at full capacity
- She outlines three scenarios, two of which assume an initial launch cost of $100 million for each fully reusable Starship and Super Heavy booster, with marginal costs of 20 or 35 percent
- The company reached nine flights of one booster in 2021, nearly 11 years after the first Falcon 9 launch
Summary
With a payload capacity of more than 100 metric tons (220,000 pounds) to low-Earth orbit, SpaceX’s new rocket is changing the thinking of about everyone in the space industry. It’s important to note that Starship is still much in its experimental phase, far from proving Elon Musk’s loftiest claims about what it can do. Still, NASA and the US military are considering novel ways to use Starship to fly to the Moon or transport cargo to far-flung war zones. This is a reversal of how things usually go in the balance of supply and demand between launch vehicles and satellite operators. Historically, engineers relied on a few basic assumptions when it came time to design a new rocket. One was that their launch vehicle would deliver a single payload or several satellites to space.