SpaceX has given the expendable payload of the V3 as 300 tons. Industry experts estimated and Elon has confirmed a build cost, i.e., the cost to SpaceX, of ca. $90 million. This is a per kg cost of ca. $300/kg, nearly a tenth of the Falcon 9 cost. This is why I disagree with the SpaceX decision not to field the Starship until it achieves full reusability. A large portion of the SpaceX revenue comes from Starlink. SpaceX could launch ten times the number of Starlinks at one-tenth the per kg cost using the Starship even as expendable now. Note that all the while SpaceX would still be investigating progressing to reusability just as it did with the Falcon 9.
Furthermore, 300 tons is about 3 times the payload of the Saturn V. SpaceX could launch a lunar mission in a single flight now by using the expendable Starship, no multiple refuelings, no problematical TPS required. With so many of the expendable Starship launches taking place, NASA would also get confidence in its reliability as a manned launcher to the Moon.
And not just the Moon. Robert Zubrin’s Mars Direct proposal could mount a manned Mars mission using two launches of a Saturn V-class rocket. Then the expendable Starship could also do a manned Mars mission in a single launch now.
by RGregoryClark
4 Comments
Starship could absolutely not do a manned mission to Mars (even an orbit only mission) in one launch.
What is the payload starship is currently capable of carrying? Not estimates, not musk’s autofellatio, just the actual payload.
>This is why I disagree with the SpaceX decision not to field the Starship until it achieves full reusability.
Every time I pointed that out all the way back to IFT-2, I got downvoted into oblivion; starship is cheap to build, and if you replace all the heat shield, fins, and landing fuel pound for pound with payload, it gets even cheaper and can throw a HUGE mass to LEO while they continue to work out catch and reuse on the second stage… superheavy is already done.
Is $90m the build cost or the marginal launch cost? Is $3000/kg the “retail price” or the cost to SpaceX?