←back to thread

199 points angadh | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.55s | source
Show context
ricardobeat ◴[] No.44395707[source]
The launch costs in the article look quite off from the outset.

A Falcon Heavy launch is already under $100M, and in the $1400/kg range; Starship’s main purpose is to massively reduce launch costs, so $1000/kg is not optimistic at all and would be a failure. Their current target is $250/kg eventually once full reusability is in place.

Still far from the dream of $30/kg but not that far.

The original “white paper” [1] also does acknowledge that a separate launch is needed for the solar panels and radiators at a 1:1 ratio to the server launches, which is ignored here. I think the author leaned in a bit too much on their deep research AI assistant output.

[1] https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf

replies(1): >>44397180 #
1. angadh ◴[] No.44397180[source]
please read Table 1.
replies(1): >>44421102 #
2. ricardobeat ◴[] No.44421102[source]
What about it? They estimate an unrealistic $5M launch cost, but the point is that it is likely to be ~$25M and not the $100M+ this article suggests.