| Yes. An estimate for 2 billion is laughable. I did not say the cost WAS $2 billion, I said the Google AI gave me a range from $100M to $2B. Maybe the total cost of the program for the 1st launch was 2 billion? But you're going to amortize that cost over (hopefully) several launches. I think you misunderstand my argument. Let me restate it. Someone, sometime said the Starship launch was $2b. The Google AI picked that up and included it in its answer. Someone, sometime said it was around $100m. The Google AI picked that up and included it in its answer. There is a lot of range between 100m and 2b, which implies there's a lot of data getting thrown around and we don't have good numbers. If observing that we don't have good numbers is arguing in bad faith... I don't know what to tell you. Musk at some point said $10m for a Starship launch. I think I found a reference for that in a CNBC interview... I'll look it up later. But my point is... It is unlikely that Starship launches are $10m RIGHT NOW. But sure... maybe they will be in the future. I take Elon with a grain of salt because of his comments regarding Full Self-Driving Mode and Robo-Taxi deployment dates. I said we should not compare New Glenn estimated launch costs RIGHT NOW with Elon's asperational price target of $10m. We should compare Starship's cost per kg to LEO RIGHT NOW with New Glenn's estimated cost per kg to LEO RIGHT NOW. Or we could compare them at a particular point in the project history. We could compare per-kg costs at first launch or estimated per-kg costs at the 10th launch. Both companies are saying they want to do a lot of launches, so we'll eventually have MUCH better data. I'm suggesting we compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges and not apples to oranges. At the current moment, all Starship launches have been fully disposable (though yes, one booster was caught by the chopsticks so it's probably more accurate to say the whole system is about 1/12th re-usable.) At this point in the program, you have to pay for each vehicle that lands or crashes in the water. I agree with you when you say "100m is more accurate for a fully disposable launch." Starship is currently more disposable than it is reusable. When SpaceX re-uses the boosters and the Starships, then it will not be fully disposable and the price per launch will go down. We are not at that point at the moment. You can tell this because a number of boosters and starships have fallen into the ocean, some crashing, some coming to a controlled stop just over the ocean and then falling over. But the important part here is that the equipment that wasn't caught by the chopsticks doesn't get to be re-used. So if you want to do another launch, you have to build new equipment. That new equipment will cost money. So if the current, mostly non-reusable Starship launches cost $100m a pop, that's after several launches. Even though we have someone estimating the first couple of New Glenn launches cost $68m, let's wait until it has 6 launches and THEN compare costs. |