Comment by giancarlostoro
14 hours ago
Sure but SpaceX can get you into orbit for $1400 per kilogram, and future projection and goal is $100 per kilogram. The competition is at $15,000 per kilogram. I think it's a no-brainer for anybody trying to get anything into orbit. Unless someone figures out superior tech that surpasses SpaceX, I'm just not seeing why anyone would spend more for less capable and costly rockets.
Doesn't SpaceX charge 2 to 3 times their internal cost to external customers? ISRO is still more expensive, IIRC they charged ~US$60 million (roughly $6000/kg) for the OneWeb launches whereas after the recent price hikes SpaceX is supposedly charging ~US$74 million on a larger rocket (~$4200/kg), but that's far from an order of magnitude difference like your comment suggests, which I assume would be using the $25 million they charge Starlink internally (IIRC ISRO's internal cost is much higher, around $40 to 50 million, but that's still not anywhere near an order of magnitude). Using internal cost from one provider and external price for another is somewhat misleading.
how many packages have you shipped so far to space? SpaceX could disappear tomorrow and most people wouldn't notice. Your satellite TV might get slightly more expensive. Those rare people that don't have LTE internet access and need starlink are exception.
> future projection and goal is $100 per kilogram
This can't be treated as meaningful, given other projections and goals (Mars colony, etc.).
At the rates you quote, $1 T (the size of the market) is 714,285 tons of stuff in the space each year. I don’t think there is enough space in space for that much cargo.
Let me introduce you to the 30 km long rotating O'Neill Cylinder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder
Although realistically this will be built from lunar materials, you still need to lift a lot of mass to build the necessary industrial processing and mass drivers to launch it from the Moon to some Lagrange point.
And there are many other useful space megastructures that can be built in space from common materials, like giant solar arrays beaming power down via microwaves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power
Most of these proposals date from even 1980s.
I guess for a trillion dollars vine can built Elysium. Generating solar power in space (vs. on the ground) makes as much sense as running AI inference in data centers in space.