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Reddit-runner t1_jdmc8s2 wrote

Reply to comment by Sea_Ask6095 in Rocket Lab targets $50 million launch price for Neutron rocket to challenge SpaceX’s Falcon 9 by cnbc_official

>They did cost a lot more.

Falcon9 did cost more? Well, the price hasn't changed.

>A hundred million dollar per launch starship would be great,

I absolutely doubt that even a completely non-reusable launch would cost SpaceX more than $50M. The hull construction of Starship is extremely cheap. Material wise and manufacturing wise. The most expensive parts are the engines.... and the recovering hardware.

The engines are like 250-500k a piece. Without recovery hardware and return propellant and a 50to payload I guess SpaceX could get away with 25 engines for the booster and 5 sea-level optimised Raptors for the ship (the giant nozzle for the vacuum optimised engines is likely quite expensive)

So that's like $7.5‐15M for the engines. Lets say $10M for each hull, $10M for propellant and launch operation and there is still a $5M profit margin in the worst case if they offer the flight for $50M.

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BrangdonJ t1_jdmeyrk wrote

They aren't going to be launching with a reduced configuration unless reuse attempts go very wrong. They will launch relatively cheaply, because some revenue is better than none, but only with configurations that are potentially reusable so they can get reuse perfected.

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Reddit-runner t1_jdmjttc wrote

Sure.

But when they even only get the booster coming back at the beginning, they are already saving massively on hardware for the next launch.

So it's even less likely they have to sell their launches above $50M to break even.

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