• 3volver@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Where’s your evidence proving exactly how much Starship has cost in total? Or wait, maybe you are just making bullshit up because you have no idea how much it has actually cost them because they don’t disclose that information like NASA does.

    • llamacoffee@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      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.