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by adgjlsfhk1 21 days ago
> SpaceX started moving into their own constellations because lower prices open up new markets, and this lets them access those markets without having to lower launch prices

the alternate take here is that even at current prices, falcon 9 is more than capable of completely filling space demand which makes building a >10x bigger vehicle seem kind of dumb
1 comments
stoneman24 21 days ago
I think the main idea for starship is fully reusable ( which falcon 9 isn’t) and much larger capacity (both volume and mass). Driving down the cost of getting mass to orbit.

I googled and got the following costs per kg to orbit Falcon approx $3000 / kg Starship (early) $600 / kg Starship (target) $ 100 / kg

If they can achieve the target, it’s transformative. The Chinese will follow the lead and be available for some commercial customers but the majority of the market will be SpaceX.

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ben_w 20 days ago
Starship would be really good even if they can't make it reusable, but still hit the early-user price tags and capacity to LEO they're talking about for expendable-mode launches, even if they then stop improving.

But unless there's demand for launching a lot more stuff, that's not going to help them make a lot of money.

I can buy into a vision of several competing Starlink-like constellations. Can't buy into one about space-based data centres. And we need a lot more demonstrations of space colony precursor tech before I'm going to even have a strong opinion about the economics of space colonies*, either for or against: they're technically feasible, but so too is one on the sea floor, or the middle of Antarctica; and there's people who already build homes for themselves in the middle of the Sahara and at high altitude on mountains, but these aren't *huge* money-makers, just standard boring ones.

* they are cool though; if Musk had actually delivered on the Mars flights that were supposed to have already arrived two years ago, and also not turned out to be who he turned out to be, I'd have considered being an early Martian: https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/01/elon-musk-says-spacex-will...

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