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by TOMDM 1170 days ago
Is that target $10kg to orbit and back?

I imagine the price of getting mass back down from orbit would bump your cost up a bit right?

2 comments

The starship upper stage has to come back down anyway, so I don’t see why you’d need to double the cost.
The upper stage coming down empty vs full of cargo are entirely different beasts surely?
Every kilogram of mass added to the return trip increases the required deceleration, fuel, etc. Not cheap. At some point you can't reach orbit with the required fuel to get everything back. The Falcon 9 boosters are nearly empty when they come back. As a matter of fact, at least one of their early landing failures was because they cut the fuel load too close and ran out of fuel just before reaching the ground. Minimizing weight on the return landing is critical.
I already doubled it ;)