Discussion
Details of Starship commercial launch costs leak via 10-K SEC filing: $90M for a 100-150 tonne payload (compared to $74M for a 22 tonne payload on Falcon 9). Note that SpaceX will expect to turn a profit on this price structure in 2029:
https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/03/21/how-much-will-a-spacex-starship-launch-cost/
@cstross I stopped following the starship hype train because of... (points in all directions), but I'd take the price of this early contract with a grain of salt. It's in SpaceX's interest to imply they'll reach this kind of price, and it's very easy to do that by selling a flagship mission at a loss. I don't think the starship reusability model is qualitatively different from the space shuttle, and we all know how much that didn't pan out as expected.
@cstross yeah but add the Full Self-Driving sub.
@cstross That sounds more like a selling price than a cost price. The Falcon-9 launch costs are typically estimated in the 20 million USD per launch ballpark, as a baseline. Additional assurance processes and other requirements may get them above that baseline, but still.
@cstross IF they really reach the 100-150t payload. By now the payload was only 37.5t and i read somewhere that it will be hard to reach the promised 100-150t ( German article: https://www.golem.de/news/starship-von-spacex-was-von-den-versprochenen-100-tonnen-nutzlast-uebrig-bleibt-2607-210968.html ).
@CyberPunker As they're already releasing Starlink V2 satellites, and the next flight is expected to have a full pez dispenser, that'll give us a low bar for *current* payload mass. Bearing in mind of course that the pez dispenser itself is part of the payload.
@cstross The article looked convincing to me and the author juggled with some numbers about the mass of the starship, the mass of the fuel, how fast it is and needs to be and that it needs more fuel to reach higher speed to reach the promised payload.
He concludes that is would not be possible.
But i'm no rocket scientist (and i think the author is neither) so we will see.
Except of course that the number count of Starship orbital flights currently lies at zero.
@knud Not exactly correct: Starship flights all reached orbital velocity, *but* were aimed with a perigee below MSL to prevent the ship getting stranded in orbit in event of an engine re-light failure. It's only "sub-orbital" the way an ICBM launched on a FOBS trajectory is "sub-orbital". (More accurate term is "fractional-orbital".) Rumour mill suggests the next test flight plan is to go the distance and de-orbit over water near Starbase.
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