POLL: Starship launch price 2025

[alexterrell]

If SpaceX can get a high flight rate they can get a low price.

A high flight rate obviously requires a low price. So there is a spiral effect:
More flights leads to lower costs leads to more flights leads to lower costs.....

But this is a relatively slow process. At the moment, few people are banking on Starship, and building all those payloads. Where are sections of the rotating space station being built? Who is designing the 2000m diameter radio telescopes (we'd want several for billion kilometre interferometry). Who is building the moon base segments? Who has even planned the "Mars Salvo"?

So initially (2025?), SpaceX will come in at the expensive end, but cheaper than Falcon 9. Why come in cheaper when the payloads are there? So probably just below $100 million.

At that point - with some experience and a track record - they can forward price.
Anyone want to launch 10,000 tons? They will do that at $20 million per launch, 100 launches, total cost $2 billion.
Anyone want to launch 100,000 tons? They will do that at $5 million per launch, 1000 launches, total cost $5 billion.

[mikelepage]

I think some here are losing sight of the meta-game that SpaceX is playing as industry leader. Sure they *could* charge relative to current industry prices, but then their only customers would be from the current space industry, and they need to induce significant new demand if they want to have any hope of Starship being viable long-term, over thousands or more flights. The fact that Starship even exists is a bet that the industry will grow exponentially.

I voted for $35-50 million (probably closer to $50 million), because I think they'll aim for somewhat below Falcon 9 prices and the calculator I was given suggests day-of-launch costs of ~$25m are very achievable at the start - that's assuming ~$200m Starship-Superheavy build cost, and averaging 20 flights for each.

Various governments will support their own sovereign launch programs as they feel they need to, but apart from that I fully foresee SpaceX gaining a near monopoly on commercial heavy launches 10 tons and up, and being very competitive below that too.

[Zed_Noir]

<snip>
Various governments will support their own sovereign launch programs as they feel they need to, but apart from that I fully foresee SpaceX gaining a near monopoly on commercial heavy launches 10 tons and up, and being very competitive below that too.

Think 2025 is bit early for SpaceX to be transform into a CHOAM like entity with almost total market share. However eventually SpaceX maritime spaceport platforms will be deployed all over the world to pick up all available payloads. Then competitors will have to compete against the Starship launching frequently from multiple launch sites with low price per kilogram of payload.

The Highlander movie meme of "There Can be Only One" is applicable if SpaceX deploys additional maritime spaceport platforms beyond the 2 former oil drilling platforms they currently have. Raising capital for SpaceX competitors after that will be problematic after that.

[rfdesigner]

I was looking at starship tonnage to LEO recently..  It looks like they're growing at about 38% annually, so if this year we have 1700 "potential tons to LEO"..  that is 100 launches of F9 @ a potential launch of 17 tons, (it's not SpaceX fault if a customer wants to pay the whole price for launching 1 ton)..  then 2024 would be 2336 tons and 2025 would be 3237 tons..  if all of those were on starship that would be 32 launches, or about one every 11 days.  I don't see that as fundamentally dropping prices, I'm not sure what the demand curve is, but I would imagine a 30% drop in price per ton to LEO would stimulate demand quite satisfactorily.  I suspect that would leave a large profit margin for SpaceX to use to start building infrastructure either to be taken to orbit, or in orbit, for future Mars missions, with the very occasional starlink SS launch spewing out dozens of satellites to fill holes.  30% cut in $/ton to LEO would be in the region of $200m, so I'd expect a lot of rideshares, I'd expect the price to fall consistently from year to year as demand gradually ramps up (the bottle-neck will likely be the customer build capacity, not starship launch cadence)

[DanClemmensen]

I was looking at starship tonnage to LEO recently..  It looks like they're growing at about 38% annually, so if this year we have 1700 "potential tons to LEO"..  that is 100 launches of F9 @ a potential launch of 17 tons, (it's not SpaceX fault if a customer wants to pay the whole price for launching 1 ton)..  then 2024 would be 2336 tons and 2025 would be 3237 tons..  if all of those were on starship that would be 32 launches, or about one every 11 days.  I don't see that as fundamentally dropping prices, I'm not sure what the demand curve is, but I would imagine a 30% drop in price per ton to LEO would stimulate demand quite satisfactorily.  I suspect that would leave a large profit margin for SpaceX to use to start building infrastructure either to be taken to orbit, or in orbit, for future Mars missions, with the very occasional starlink SS launch spewing out dozens of satellites to fill holes.  30% cut in $/ton to LEO would be in the region of $200m, so I'd expect a lot of rideshares, I'd expect the price to fall consistently from year to year as demand gradually ramps up (the bottle-neck will likely be the customer build capacity, not starship launch cadence)

I have a question: if you launch an SS that will not return to Earth, (e.g., HLS or Depot) do you count some or all of its mass as part of the payload? By 2024, SpaceX is supposed to be launching depot and HLS.

Clearly, when an LV is launching (parts of) an appendix P HLS, it's payload of the LV.

[mandrewa]

I was looking at starship tonnage to LEO recently..  It looks like they're growing at about 38% annually, so if this year we have 1700 "potential tons to LEO"..  that is 100 launches of F9 @ a potential launch of 17 tons, (it's not SpaceX fault if a customer wants to pay the whole price for launching 1 ton)..  then 2024 would be 2336 tons and 2025 would be 3237 tons..  if all of those were on starship that would be 32 launches, or about one every 11 days.  I don't see that as fundamentally dropping prices, I'm not sure what the demand curve is, but I would imagine a 30% drop in price per ton to LEO would stimulate demand quite satisfactorily.  I suspect that would leave a large profit margin for SpaceX to use to start building infrastructure either to be taken to orbit, or in orbit, for future Mars missions, with the very occasional starlink SS launch spewing out dozens of satellites to fill holes.  30% cut in $/ton to LEO would be in the region of $200m, so I'd expect a lot of rideshares, I'd expect the price to fall consistently from year to year as demand gradually ramps up (the bottle-neck will likely be the customer build capacity, not starship launch cadence)

I have a question: if you launch an SS that will not return to Earth, (e.g., HLS or Depot) do you count some or all of its mass as part of the payload? By 2024, SpaceX is supposed to be launching depot and HLS.

Clearly, when an LV is launching (parts of) an appendix P HLS, it's payload of the LV.

I would say it's all payload.  Now we don't count the final stages of a launch to orbit as part of the payload even if that last stage doesn't return to Earth.  And part of the mass of these Starship-based vehicles that will be delivered to orbit might be seen as not being useful later on and therefore kind of like carrying around the last stage forever.

But by that very token SpaceX will obviously try to minimize any non-useful mass. And therefore it seems reasonable to count it all as payload.

[DanClemmensen]

I was looking at starship tonnage to LEO recently..  It looks like they're growing at about 38% annually, so if this year we have 1700 "potential tons to LEO"..  that is 100 launches of F9 @ a potential launch of 17 tons, (it's not SpaceX fault if a customer wants to pay the whole price for launching 1 ton)..  then 2024 would be 2336 tons and 2025 would be 3237 tons..  if all of those were on starship that would be 32 launches, or about one every 11 days.  I don't see that as fundamentally dropping prices, I'm not sure what the demand curve is, but I would imagine a 30% drop in price per ton to LEO would stimulate demand quite satisfactorily.  I suspect that would leave a large profit margin for SpaceX to use to start building infrastructure either to be taken to orbit, or in orbit, for future Mars missions, with the very occasional starlink SS launch spewing out dozens of satellites to fill holes.  30% cut in $/ton to LEO would be in the region of $200m, so I'd expect a lot of rideshares, I'd expect the price to fall consistently from year to year as demand gradually ramps up (the bottle-neck will likely be the customer build capacity, not starship launch cadence)

I have a question: if you launch an SS that will not return to Earth, (e.g., HLS or Depot) do you count some or all of its mass as part of the payload? By 2024, SpaceX is supposed to be launching depot and HLS.

Clearly, when an LV is launching (parts of) an appendix P HLS, it's payload of the LV.

I would say it's all payload.  Now we don't count the final stages of a launch to orbit as part of the payload even if that last stage doesn't return to Earth.  And part of the mass of these Starship-based vehicles that will be delivered to orbit might be seen as not being useful later on and therefore kind of like carrying around the last stage forever.

But by that very token SpaceX will obviously try to minimize any non-useful mass. And therefore it seems reasonable to count it all as payload.

Depot: all payload except the raptors.  HLS: all payload except some percentage of the mass of the tanks and 5 of the six Raptors.

[jongoff]

I voted for $50-70M. That's still a good deal relative to current vehicles, but I really don't think we'll see dramatic *price* reductions until SpaceX has at least one serious competitor, which isn't likely to be by next year.

~Jon

[DeimosDream]

Results are in... looks like 91% of us, myself included, were a bit too optimistic on how fast Starship would begin to operationally fly customer payloads.

Maybe the next poll should be -when- Starship will fly a paying customer payload rather than try to guess Starship's market rate?

[jongoff]

Results are in... looks like 91% of us, myself included, were a bit too optimistic on how fast Starship would begin to operationally fly customer payloads.

Maybe the next poll should be -when- Starship will fly a paying customer payload rather than try to guess Starship's market rate?

I like that idea for a poll. Do you want to run it, or would you like me to set it up?

~Jon

[DeimosDream]

Results are in... looks like 91% of us, myself included, were a bit too optimistic on how fast Starship would begin to operationally fly customer payloads.

Maybe the next poll should be -when- Starship will fly a paying customer payload rather than try to guess Starship's market rate?

I like that idea for a poll. Do you want to run it, or would you like me to set it up?

~Jon

Go for it.

[jongoff]

Results are in... looks like 91% of us, myself included, were a bit too optimistic on how fast Starship would begin to operationally fly customer payloads.

Maybe the next poll should be -when- Starship will fly a paying customer payload rather than try to guess Starship's market rate?

I like that idea for a poll. Do you want to run it, or would you like me to set it up?

~Jon

Go for it.

Ok, I added a few caveats to make the poll (IMO) more useful. Specifically, I caveated it in a way that the payload had to be deployed on orbit, had to be a primary payload, and had to be from a paying customer outside of SpaceX (i.e., not counting Starlink or HLS launches): https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=62209.0

I don't think that overconstrains it, but hopefully gets at the question you wanted to ask.

~Jon