#and thats not even getting into spacex's commercial space flights

[dragonforsale]

Man i hate the new capitalist space race. NASA is starting to need to rely on private companies to conduct research because NASA doesn't have enough funding to do it themselves. Currently, they're looking for commercial private companies (both us based and international) to mine the moon for research into a way astronauts can 'live off the land' on the moon and then later mars. However, these companies are not just in it for research purposes only, a lot of them want to mine the moon for potential commercial uses such as mining helium-3 as well. Once one company does it, we will see a wave of companies going up there to commercially mine for helium-3.

#and thats not even getting into spacex's commercial space flights #space exploration is no longer for the betterment of humanity #but then again i suppose it never was #seeing as how the original space race was fueled by the political dynamics of the cold war #thoughts

[justinforprez]

Real Starship costs

I gathered these from a ton of sources on the internet. some are dubious reddit posts sucking Musk's cock

But anyway I want to crunch some numbers on REAL costs

Starship has $30k in helium, $3 mil in methane (at least) and $300k in oxygen (at least) per flight. Not counting other consumables for passengers

It requires 14 flights to get enough fuel to go to the moon plus the first flight for passengers thats $50 mil

$45mil in heat tiles if it was the space shuttle and Space X said it was $12,000 per sq meter or $9.6 mil which is on Nasa's material cost database so I trust it

Thats quite the improvement in 40 years. Not bad. Still crazy

1.25% needed to be replaced per flight but otherwise have a 100 flight lifespan but its probably longer

So thats $120k in tiles per flight

The best engines EVER the RS-25 only lasted UP TO 15 flights and SpaceX have never officially stated how long the engines last but have said reuse up to 10 times and ONE booster managed 21 launches so far but we don't know anything about its engines

Theres roughly $38 mil in engines if SpaceX can be believed and I have no reason to doubt them on engine costs. At 10x reuse thats $3.8 mil per launch.

.Estimated total dev cost will be $10 bil but thats not usually counted but $6bil of that would need to be private investment as per commercial space requirements. Not counting profit if we assume that the vehicles have a lifespan similar to shuttles at 100 launches. I do think that the shuttles development cost of $50 bil was reasonable but with advanced in CAD I think they COULD do it for $10 bil and that 10 bil is from experts.

development plus 4 launches will complete $5 bil in spending

The last shuttle was $1.7 billion. Space X say that the full stack was $150 mil. Experts believe that the Falcon 9 costs about $30 million to build.

The raptors are at least twice as expensive and theres 38 total in the stack. vs 10 on Falcon. So they are about 2x as expensive per kg lifted. So maybe the vehicle. Falcon 9 lifts 1/5 that of starships claimed 100 tons (it only did 50 the first time). So $300 million to build. Thats maybe not exactly fair since tank costs don't space linearly. Bigger tank is not that much more expensive. But thats $3 mil/ launch. I can't spend all night on this.

So far we have $10.75 mil per launch as COST, not price. and we are fully excluding development, operations, tracking, refurbishment (we assume it lasts 100 times at no cost then fully replace), and of course profit.

SpaceX want to go public. Profit will matter.

Musk claims $2-3 mil/launch. Thats not possible.

Falcon 9 has a refurbished cost of $15 mil. So they spend 1/2 the cost on refurbishment for reference. Which is awful by the way and worse than Shuttle which was about 1/4 and still wasn't worth refurbishing.

So without refurb I expect a price of at least $20 mil/launch and more likely $30 mil if they go public. But realistically since it can lift 5x falcon the price would be $300 mil if they had to pay for all that other shit and not compete with their other product.

However if their refurb cost is similar to Shuttle at 1/4 cost per flight thats $75 mil added. So $85 mil cost and likely triple that for the sale price. So $250 mil per launch

Thats cheap. Dirt cheap by the way

Its still VERY cheap to get that much to orbit and I feel that its much more realistic.

I hate these fraudulent, ridiculous lies by Musk. Its still a potentially revolutionary vehicle at that price.

However its TERRIBLE for getting to the Moon or Mars. It they have $85 mil in costs for 15 launches to refill to go to the moon and 20 launches for mars (one way trip) thats $1.275 billion to go to the moon. Which is DIRT CHEAP compared to apollo. Musk could be making these numbers as claims at could actually back them up even if they end up being too optimistic.

Also launching 15 rockets to do one moon trip is fucking nuts by the way and incredible unreliable. given that the real engine life will probably be around 10 to 15 launches. that a whole starship per trip in which case you should just expend the vehicle and make it out of carbon fiber.

#space x #spacex #elon musk #tesla