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A comment on SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel. Parent comment

Re:SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform spa... by arcticbull on Thursday February 17, 2022 @06:11PM (#30379999)
Russian Roscosmos costs $35-48.5M per launch. [1]

Shuttle launches were about $450M per launch, with 7 people and 50,000lbs of cargo. Came to about $10,000 per kg, vs SpaceX Falcon 9 at $27,000 [edit] and the Dragon around $9,000.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz-2

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Re:SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform spa... by yazaddaruvala on Thursday February 17, 2022 @06:29PM (#30380177)
In case you’re not very familiar, when dealing with launches to orbit: cost only makes sense in terms of “$ per kg per launch to <orbital destination>”, not “$ per launch to <orbital destination>”.

For the Roscosmos costs, mass to LEO seems to be $4270/kg [0].

Falcon 9 is at $1270/kg [1]. This link also has the comparison with the Space Shuttle.

[0] $35 MM / 8200kg [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210801024432/https://ntrs.nasa...

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Re:SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform spa... by arcticbull on Thursday February 17, 2022 @06:31PM (#30380190)
There's a difference between per-launch cost and program costs.
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Re:SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform spa... by caoilte on Thursday February 17, 2022 @06:27PM (#30380155)
Max Payload to LEO 8,200kg. Max payload of falcon 9 is 22,800kg.

Looks to me like falcon 9 is considerably better value on those numbers even at twice the price.

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Re:SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform spa... by samlents on Thursday February 17, 2022 @06:16PM (#30380052)
The final seat to space purchased from Roscosmos cost $86M. [1] That's one seat, not the full vehicle.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-hitches-its-final-ride-to...

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