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Reddit-runner t1_jdm7p1y wrote

Reply to comment by Sea_Ask6095 in Rocket Lab targets $50 million launch price for Neutron rocket to challenge SpaceX’s Falcon 9 by cnbc_official

>There is a long road ahead before starship has rapid and reliable reuse

This was also the case for Falcon9. But that didn't stop SpaceX from flying commercial payloads, did it?

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Sea_Ask6095 t1_jdm896h wrote

They did cost a lot more. The super optimistic cost projections for starship won't come for many years. A hundred million dollar per launch starship would be great, but a 50 million dollar neutron would be better for a five tonne satellite.

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Reddit-runner t1_jdmc8s2 wrote

>They did cost a lot more.

Falcon9 did cost more? Well, the price hasn't changed.

>A hundred million dollar per launch starship would be great,

I absolutely doubt that even a completely non-reusable launch would cost SpaceX more than $50M. The hull construction of Starship is extremely cheap. Material wise and manufacturing wise. The most expensive parts are the engines.... and the recovering hardware.

The engines are like 250-500k a piece. Without recovery hardware and return propellant and a 50to payload I guess SpaceX could get away with 25 engines for the booster and 5 sea-level optimised Raptors for the ship (the giant nozzle for the vacuum optimised engines is likely quite expensive)

So that's like $7.5‐15M for the engines. Lets say $10M for each hull, $10M for propellant and launch operation and there is still a $5M profit margin in the worst case if they offer the flight for $50M.

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BrangdonJ t1_jdmeyrk wrote

They aren't going to be launching with a reduced configuration unless reuse attempts go very wrong. They will launch relatively cheaply, because some revenue is better than none, but only with configurations that are potentially reusable so they can get reuse perfected.

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Reddit-runner t1_jdmjttc wrote

Sure.

But when they even only get the booster coming back at the beginning, they are already saving massively on hardware for the next launch.

So it's even less likely they have to sell their launches above $50M to break even.

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BrangdonJ t1_jdmfqop wrote

I would expect them to price Starship at or below Falcon 9 from very early on. That lets them move payloads from Falcon 9 to Starship. Every Starship launch is an opportunity to practice landing of the first and second stages. It makes sense to include commercial payloads for their practice launches even if they do so at a loss, because they need to launch anyway and some revenue is better than none.

They'll charge what the market will bear, and it won't bear more than Falcon 9 (for payloads Falcon 9 can carry) because Starship doesn't have the track record of success.

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