31–40 of 113 posts
It just isn't plausible that Starship launch costs for LEO could be 1/28th the costs for Falcon Heavy. This sounds like more Musk optimism to me.
Given these insanely cheap prices, I have to wonder about the viability of sending your own microsatellites into space to create your own personal communications cluster. I don't know enough to know what all would be required, how / if you could communicate with other networks, etc., but even just having your own personal LEO satellite-based communications network seems relatively plausible based on these launch cost…
In Switzerland, in some Cantons, there is a trash tax. You pay roughly 1-2 USD the small taxed trash bag. So at the current trend it will literally become cost efficient to send our trash to space in a few years.
Not diminishing the technology advancement that SpaceX has been pushing but are these prices profitable? Or is it similar to the Tesla strategy which is to keep margin minimal (even negative) at the benefit of breaking into the market?
Nice charts ! I was a bit sad not to find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_(rocket_family) in the list ! I'm really not expert enough into space race matters to know if it's relevant, or if the tiny french LEO platform would be worth charting ?
And in fact, the source spreadsheet [0] lists a few members of the Ariane family - so I think it's charted.
0: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TPewJ64QNVtM5sbRDIXu...
In Switzerland, in some Cantons, there is a trash tax. You pay roughly 1-2 USD the small taxed trash bag. So at the current trend it will literally become cost efficient to send our trash to space in a few years.
Trash is full of valuable materials! Right now it may not be economical to recover those, but I would be surprised if we aren't mining our landfills in the next 100 years. That said, the CO2 emissions from launching anything non-essential into orbit are huge, I'd wait until we have a space elevator to (intentionally) throw trash into space.
It just isn't plausible that Starship launch costs for LEO could be 1/28th the costs for Falcon Heavy. This sounds like more Musk optimism to me.
″[The rocket] costs $28 million to launch it, that’s with everything,” Couluris said, adding that reusing the rockets is what is “bringing the price down.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/16/elon-musk-spacex-falcon-9-ro...
As SpaceX uses their Falcon 9s more, the cost will continue to fall and approach consumables plus the amortized cost of the 1st stage.
The Starship is the same idea, but with larger payload and better reusability. Realistically it'll be somewhat expensive initially, but as they improve the design and reuse, costs will drop.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trash is full of valuable materials! Right now it may not be economical to recover those, but I would be surprised if we aren't mining our landfills in the next 100 years. That said, the CO2 emissions from launching anything non-essential into orbit are huge, I'd wait until we have a space elevator to (intentionally) throw trash into space.
I'm interested to see what's viable to send to orbit now. Can a solar shade be put up which blocks light from hitting our poles and prevent some climactic change? How about rocketing asteroids back to LEO for processing into valuable minerals?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining#Proposed_minin...
Are these numbers inflation adjusted? The difference would be far more dramatic if not.
For the smallest possible missions, the price per kg is fairly constant in recent years - $50,000/kg. SpaceX does indeed offers the best price: $5000/kg, but only if you are buying in bulk.