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by portillo 2432 days ago
You are right, maybe I should have said where the sub-100$/kg comes from.

In the first Starlink launch, with 60 satellites of ~230 kg each, the cost of launch was ~$30M (considering that the "retail price" of a Falcon 9 launch is $60M, I guess that half the cost if a good assumption). Thus, the cost per kg was $30M / (60 * 230 kg) ~ $2,000/kg. I just don't see how they are going to achieve a x10 reduction in cost, even considering reusability, larger masses, etc, etc.

1 comments

Yeah, I guess we'll see. Economies of scale and complete many-times reusability of both stages sound like plausible multipliers to me, but it's all speculation until the thing flies a few times and they get a mature production line up and running.