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Comment by kuu | Hacker News Reader

> From layperson's perspective, SpaceX so far has done nothing new that hasn't been done 50 years ago.

https://bucket2.glanacion.com/anexos/fotos/85/2912485.gif

In the last 50 years we did not have anything like this. Rocket re-utilization, now only for first stage but also second stage in the future is a game changer in the economics of launching a rocket.

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Yes it’s cool and being cheaper is a nice thing but what does it enable that wasn’t possible before?

Imagine you go to a furniture factory and visit the owner. You tell him the factory is cool but what does it do that wasn't possible before? All the machines are just cutting wood. A carpenter with a hand saw could have done the same things during the iron age.

Cost is the usually the main factor determining whether something is possible.

What is this thing that wasn’t possible before but possible now thanks to the discount?

I know the talking points but what about the specifics?

Specifically a manned flight to mars, which before depended on the cyclic political will and state of the cold war to be funded. There are also other uses for starship like 30 minute suborbital flights between new york and london. Maybe it's easier to see if you look at the limits: given an infinite amount of money and labour, we wouldve seen a manned mars landing in the 1980's perhaps. If on the other hand funding was finite and reaching mars cost 100% of world gdp, it would never happen.

SpaceX launch cost is roughtly half of competitions for same payload: 40mil USD vs 90mil (Ariane Space).

40mil is far more affordable than 90mil, and they are promising lower prices in future.

Starlink becomes economically viable.

Building a satellite constellation with 42,000 satellites comes to mind.

Is this possible due to the rocket re-use? Do you have the numbers? I want to understand the economics of this.

I know the talking points but I’m septic because nobody seems to know the specifics.

Since the satellites are mass produced each one is comparatively cheap. That means losing them is an option and SpaceX can launch them using parts that no other customer would want (first stage boosters that have been flown 4 or more times already). Their main costs are the second stage ($20 million), payload adapter and fairings (which are simpler than the normal $10 million version), fuel ($300k) and ground support etc ($1M?). That puts you in the range of $30 million. A regular launch would cost twice that, and any competitor easily twice of that again. So it's a 4x launch cost reduction, and a lot of the remaining cost can be written off as R&D as it's exploring the failure points of reused boosters, eventually allowing them to put regular customers on more heavily used boosters with confidence.

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