[lquist]

What does Starship reusability mean for $/kg to LEO? I know there are longer term targets of $10/kg but that supposes efficiencies that aren’t here yet. Would be helpful to understand before Starship reusability where the state of the art was in terms of $/kg to LEO and where we would be with impending Starship reusability.

[augusto-moura]

I don't think we have a number for it yet. But it will definitely be the cheapest launch system at the time of launch.

People say 200$/kg just with booster reuse, and 20$/kg with full reuse. Of course this might be too optimistic, but I truly believe we might reach under 50$ in this decade.

[quotemstr]

Even $50 is within "going to the moon for my honeymoon" range. Wow.

[moffkalast]

This might be the best time to get into cubesat development as a hobby, lol.

[jackcviers3]

What is a good estimate of the number of times these boosters and engines will be reusable?

[asadotzler]

Everyone gets this wrong, cost is not price. SpaceX themselves launch Starlinks at about $1,200/kg but they charge customers closer to $12,000/kg. Do the math. Costs coming down are increases in SpaceX profits, not decreases in customer prices.

[TMWNN]

Besides what 55555 said, in the near term SpaceX has indeed passed at least some of the cost savings onto customers. NASA administrator Bill Nelson quoted a member of the Joint Chiefs as telling him that SpaceX had saved the US government $40 billion for just launching military payloads. <https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/06/05/did-spacex-really-...>

On the civilian side, SpaceX saved NASA $2 billion for just one payload, Europa Clipper <https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/a-year-from-launch-the...>, so who knows how many billions more from other launches.

[55555]

Over the extremely long term in competitive industries, prices asymptote at ~costs. So it's still a generally useful measure, and in ~all cases, it's at least a directional indicator.

[thinkcontext]

The dominant variable is how often they can reuse the stages. Last I heard Musk was targeting dozens of reuses for the upper stage and hundreds for the booster. If they are short of the cost per kg goes up.

[acover]

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bgmsm9/cost_...

[JumpCrisscross]

> What does Starship reusability mean for $/kg to LEO?

All we can say is under $1,000/kg. Which is conservative, that limit being about two thirds that of Falcon Heavy’s theoretical cost to LEO in a reüsable configuration.

[thinkcontext]

We can't give any estimate. The costs depend on how many times the stages are reused. They have targets but we don't know what will actually happen.