Comment by throwaway2037
2 days ago
From the official launch video from SpaceX: https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-13
Around 20 minutes into the flight, they deploy 20x v3 sats. Google search tells me those cost more than 1M USD each. Yikes... they burned up 20M USD for a "few tests". Damn, space is expensive! The official video says that SpaceX only had twenty minutes to test the deployed sats before they fall back to the atmosphere.
Worth it to prove the pez dispenser deployed them correctly? Small % of the total launch cost.