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Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

Estimates of costs for getting payloads into LEO in the Apollo era are around $50,000/kg (in modern USD terms). I believe the Shuttle was pretty similar.

Estimates for SpaceX seem to be around $2,700/kg but I'm not sure this factors in first stage reuse so it's probably closer to $1,000/kg.

Starship will get this into the $hundreds/kg while also being able to launch individually much larger payloads. It's hard to overstate just how important that is.

I personally believe this will have a profound effect on commercial space operations including a likely commercial station that is much larger than the ISS. Personally I think we should invest in a station with spin gravity on at least part of the station. All of this being a necessary step towards industry.

And all of this from a private investment of ~$20 billion, which I believe was roughly the development cost of either SLS or Orion.

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F9 price could also drop a bit if they could nail fairing recovery, as they are still dumping a pretty expensive thing in the water every launch. Seems a much harder problem than stage1 recovery though.

But either way, this is insane. Taking something from $50,000 to < $1,000 per KG in a handful of years. Curious all the applications that come form this. I don't fully understand what all we can do in space even with it cheaper. A base to asteroid mine could be a cute start.

They are already doing fairing recovery. The fish it out of the water and reuse it. The stopped trying to catch them. Dropping them in the ocean for a shore while is not doing enough damage.

Also, the price is not low margin, lower cost is just more profit for SpaceX.

Estimations are that internal cost is only ~20 million $ or maybe 25. The price has not gone down much with re-usability.

the problem is spacex doesn't have a price competitor so, ironically, the only price pressure is upward. I was hoping Blue Origin would at least keep pace because then there would be an alternative in the same neighborhood on price.

Who knows, maybe one of the other up and coming companies like Rocket Lab could add some pressure.

Oh I missed the bit where they were still usable after a fishing out, that is great.

Regarding commercial space station, there is Bezos-led Orbital Reef

https://www.orbitalreef.com/

NASA received 12 applications for commercial space station concepts. Only 4 of them have been made public so far, and some of those likely cost under $1 billion. Orbital Reef has to be well over $10 billion so the only way that's ever going to happen is if Bezos pays for it himself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ01AtbRH2Y&t=2s

Bezos-led companies should probably get their engines sorted out and make orbit before they go planning any space stations.

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