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Massive explosion rocks SpaceX Texas facility, Starship engine in flames (interestingengineering.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/03/thursdays-starship-flight-provided-a-glimpse-into-a-future-of-abundant-access-to-space/

SpaceX can likely build and launch a fully expendable version of Starship for about $100 million. Most of that money is in the booster, with its 33 engines. So once Super Heavy becomes reusable, you can probably cut manufacturing costs down to about $30 million per launch.

This means that, within a year or so, SpaceX will have a rocket that costs about $30 million and lifts 100 to 150 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.

Bluntly, this is absurd.

For fun, we could compare that to some existing rockets. NASA's Space Launch System, for example, can lift up to 95 tons to low-Earth orbit. That's nearly as much as Starship. But it costs $2.2 billion per launch, plus additional ground systems fees. So it's almost a factor of 100 times more expensive for less throw weight. Also, the SLS rocket can fly once per year at most.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

likely

probably

Where is the "exactly" that I asked about?