How Much Cheaper Are SpaceX Reusable Rockets? Now We Know

A direct price list apparently isn’t available, but the authors attempt to put together what the cost of the reusable Falcon 9 will be once all the government contracting is figured out: originally $62 million, now potentially $36 million. With a payload to LEO (with a reusable booster) of 34,400 pounds that works out to $1,047 per pound. Still a tad high to horse my dead ass into orbit for a weekend jaunt, but a substantial improvement over anything else out there, save perhaps boosters that are massively subsidized by governments. SLS will reportedly cost $2 *BILLION* or so per launch (not counting development cost) in order to plop 290,000 pounds into LEO… a cost of $6896 per pound.

Starship/Super Heavy is hoped to be able to put 100,000 pounds in LEO for $2,000,000. This optimistic goal works out to 20 dollars per pound… cheap enough to dream of any of us seeing space (or, perhaps, at least our still-warm corpses, having keeled over from heart failure or a stroke on the way up as the vibration and G-forces crush our bodies as badly as 2020 has crushed out spirits). But it will be quite a while before people are buying steerage class tickets to LEO.