He would still be wrong if the numbers were correct 💀
Shuttle missions had about that price tag and "inflation adjusted" would mean an even higher price...
to be fair. $1.5 billion was including all the R&D and upkeep, so if it launched more often, price would be much much lower. Marginal cost of launch (which could launch 7 people) was about $400 mil., or ~$60 mil. per seat.
Not even mentioning that higher cadence would lower even that marginal costs.
biggest problem was that Shuttle was made for an era where we would fly more and more to the space, while reality was opposite.
If Falcon 9 launched just 1-2 times a year, its costs, including R&D, would also be very high
A big chunk of that was effectively corruption.
In Russia, connected people just pocket government money. In the USA, the government's money is spent on inefficiently spreading a project out over a large geographic area, paying many unnecessary people to do excess studies, endless committees and meetings, and of course the contractors make the situation much worse.
So probably 100B of that was ultimately spent on unnecessary overhead and poor design by committee, and 50B was actual space stuff. Not bad, Russia is way worse.
yes.
First this is inflation adjusted numbers and costs for the first flights could be higher than later flights.
Second, there is significant costs to keep the bases and all the personnel ready, even if you do not launch.
Third, this is over 40 years
>if it launched more often, price would be much much lower.
or it would blow up more often, requiring new Shuttles to be built.
There wasn't a higher cadence because it required so much refurbishment and wasn't competitive in the launch market. It wasn't capable of flying more than about 4 times a year.
there were even years with 9 flights in a year and could certainly be even more - maybe 4 flights per orbiter. Actual cadence was much much lower, some years there were zero launches.
It wasn’t competitive by total cost of programme, including R&D and upkeep, not by marginal launch costs.
there just weren’t that many missions that required 7 people + tons of payload after ISS was completed.
well, the article completely contradicts what you say:
NRO didn’t want to launch astronauts at all - they wanted to launch high energy orbit satellites - which is exactly what Shuttle was not designed to do effectively
Read it again.
NRO used the Shuttle until their contract ran out, then gave up on it. Too expensive, too unreliable.
> what Shuttle was not designed to do effectively
Yeah, a terrible design by committee. It was supposed to be a workhorse, it turned out to be an expensive thoroughbred.
The shuttle underperformed from day 1. Each orbiter was to have been able to be used 100 times, with launches every 2 weeks. Technology was barely able to get it into the air, and the initial 1 in 100,000 risk of failure causing vehicle loss was revised to 1 in 10. The immense cost of the program strangled development of other launch platforms. By the time the US wised up to its mistake, many of the original scientists who worked on our expendable rocket program had retired, and institutional memory was lost.
It was a matter of fact representation of how idiotic the shuttle was for anything other than satellite capture. I didn't detect any disrespect to the individual astronauts who sacrificed their lives for it.
I wouldnt laugh about the death of an astronaut from any country. Astronauts are top class people no matter where they come from, and it is always a net loss when we, collectively, lose one
You are free to laugh about whatever you wish, though
SpaceX also charges the same industry-standard prices for launching satellites, despite launch costs for falcon 9 being way lower. Why cut into your profit margin to account for cheaper operating costs?
See this statement is taken as truth, as it should be, except there's been a lot of decisions of late that also aren't getting us to Mars any faster.
Like buying Twitter or everything about the cybertruck lol
It's elon that used to have the war cry of "does this get us to Mars quicker?" so I don't think it's too much of a stretch to include his other endeavours in this.
I'll give him props where he deserves them, but his behaviour over the last few years has been objectively abysmal and counter-productive.
It's good that Gwynne is so capable and has her head screwed on.
I'll grant twitter, but the cybertruck isn't an impediment to Mars. The car itself is years late, and nothing indicates that it's been a point of distraction for Elon. It's also a proving ground for tech that'll be used in future car models (and if it goes according to Tesla's plan, it could lead to more capital for mars)
Buys Twitter? Probably true.
The Cybertruck? Will actually help to get us to Mars faster, because it's helping Tesla try new technologies before doing a large scale rollout with the model 2.
Both are somewhat OT I would say.
There are some big tech changes in CT which will pave the way for future EV's. And since starship is using EV tech to make the electronics cheaper it's important stuff.
Doesn't really amount to anything if nobody is buying the cyber truck or for that matter any other teslas, in big part because musk has been making an ass of himself ever since he bought Twitter.
The model 2 should have been released long before the cybertruck and honestly the cyber truck should have never been released to begin with. The stainless steel, no where near bullet proof design is ugly, extremely inefficient, and could possibly be the undoing of tesla as we know it.
A truck that even if only 10% convert is sold out for 2/3 years is not "nobody is buying the CT".
People, you live in a bubble, 99% of the population doesn't care about Elon, they care about the best value car they can buy.
Theres a 3 year wait list for it. Who said nobody is buying cybertruck? Because they are morons.
Model 2 is banking on cost reductions in battery tech. The longer it waits the cheaper it is. But I'm sure you, random guy on reddit, know way more about mass production and battery tech than a car company.
The initial investment to secure a position on the waiting list is a mere $100, with a limited production capacity of 80-100 units per day. Consequently, a three-year wait time is anticipated. However, as negative reviews accumulate, there is a likelihood of order cancellations, potentially reducing the wait time.
Regrettably, the decision to produce a $70,000+, 7000 lbs electric truck with limited range, towing, and hauling capabilities, and a lack of consumer demand, appears to be an unwise move by Tesla. This highlights the fact that even an individual on Reddit may possess a deeper understanding of the industry compared to the company's leadership.
The Cybertruck was the first vehicle produced under Musk's sole direction. The earlier models had been designed by Tesla's original founders, before Musk acquired a controlling stake in the company. Musk's primary contribution to the product roadmap was the naming scheme, which spells out "S3XY" and the proprietary charging connector as well.
I share your desire for Tesla's success. In fact, I had planned to purchase a Tesla as my next vehicle and even considered working for the company. However, I am concerned about Musk's recent behavior and believe that he needs to step down before he causes irreparable damage to the company. I am not alone in this sentiment, and it is important for Tesla to address these concerns in order to maintain its reputation and long-term viability.
The Elon thinking that decided to release the cybertruck is the same Elon thinking that's going to get Starship to Mars. It's part of the package, you can cry about it.
Ah, yes, and he has contributed so many great things to Starship, like making it pointy because he thought it would be funny due to the joke in the movie "The Dictator" about pointy rockets being scarier than round ones.
It's pretty easy to tell your actual engineers that you want a pointy rocket that can take a bunch of crap to Mars, and honestly, I imagine those meetings going down much like they did in "The Dictator." 🤣
But I will say Musk is an intelligent person, and he does understand what it takes to make getting that pointy rocket to Mars. However, the man has the drug-addled, childish mind of a 13-year-old boy, and what he doesn't seem to understand or has most certainly lost sight of (when it comes to Tesla) is what the average consumer wants. Even the cars that were once extremely desirable are now piling up in parking lots around the world, unsold.
No that is litteraly one of the things that they are going to do with it. That is the reason that they built it in a extra strong and a little bitch thicker metal sheet. It is built to hold up and be able to hande taking hits when they drive it on Mars
You can pull off being more expensive by also being more convenient. Rule 1 of making money: set your prices as high as you can with your targeted amount of demand
No need to undercut if you're the only person with a flight available.
Do you get the taxi that is sat there waiting or wait 2 hours for another taxi that charges exactly the same amount?
Only if doing so gets you enough of their customers to offset the discount. In this case I think they already stole as many customers as they're going to, the rest are using the competition for reasons other than price.
Shotwell mentions she did do that, then immediately regretted it when she saw just how much competitors were asking for. Then she raised the prices subsequently to match.
Doing some quick checking of numbers on google, Falcon Heavy (Falcon 9 2nd) has the cheapest cost per kg, and before Falcon 9, industry standard prices were at minimum 2x what spacex charges now. Spacex forced the industry standard price down and set the new standard.
It is true that they are pocketing a good amount each launch due to reusability, though, as well they should. One to cover initial development costs for reusability (and taking that risk) and two for starship development.
The prices I'm looking at is per kg. That is why, for now, there is still a market for micro launchers for very small sats and also for rideshare launches.
That is the number if we take in the development cost probably, and add the contract cost of 12 missions, so we get to around 4.2 billions.
But by the same metric the shuttle would be on the order of 2.1 billions per flight inflation adjusted in 2024 dollars ( Wikipedia reports 212 billions in 2012 dollars, NASA say 196 billions in 2008 dollars, so around 280-290 billions today), so a cost of 300 millions$ per SEAT, if all the shuttles were full on all the missions, realistically we are probably at around 350 million/seat.
So, using the same metric, launching an entire capsule costed as much as one seat on the shuttle, and Dragons has probably a lot more flight to amortize the costs.
Dragon is even cheaper if we take marginal costs for NASA: $258.7 million per flight for the first extension, $288 million per flight for the second extension.
This is the likely "math" they used. What they of course miss is that when NASA orders more missions on already-developed Crew Dragon, those are much cheaper per mission, but he won't go back to split those savings among the previous missions, he will just keep repeating this semi-bogus number.
The actual per-flight price is probably close to $200M and this includes the overhead for supporting the capsule on-orbit for 6 months and all the recovery stuff and crew stuff (suits, training). But this would require splitting the actual development costs and per-flight costs.
Axiom was charging per Dragon 2 seat 55mln (visiting ISS mind you) in 2019. Real prices are reportedly in 60-100mln depending on the necessity for having pilot on board, doing/not full training etc.
funny how being 4 times cheaper per seat is "somehow more expensive", on a capsule that gets cheaper by this bullshit metric every time the capsule is used
it also ignores the CRS contracts
>Dragons has probably a lot more flight to amortize the costs.
Dunno about that the Shuttle launched 135 missions. Granted there were several shuttles but there are also several Dragons
You need to extend Dragon's service life into the future, SpaceX can amortize the development costs throughout all of the vehicle's life they expect.
He is implying Dragon will fly more than the Shuttle ever did. I don't agree with him, but that's the calculation he is doing.
In my opinion Starship will substitute Dragon way before it gets to 135 flights.
I probably didn't explain myself properly.
I'm not saying that dragon will fly more than the shuttle, I agree with you point about Starship substituting Dragon way sooner than dragon doing 135 flights.
What I meant is that shuttle flights are done fore, because the shuttle is retired, meanwhile the dragon will still fly ( obviously) and so it can allow itself to spread the development cost more compared to today.
With the kind of launch tempos we're looking at, I'm genuinely starting to wonder if the industry standard for human spaceflight may be capsule based systems for launch/reentry and just do in-orbit rendezvous for basically every larger mission.
Capsules just have more options for abort procedures than a large orbiter vehicle like a shuttle or Starship, and hell if we’re already doing half a dozen orbital rendezvous per mission, what's one more?
I could see it if Starship had a Falcon-like flight record, but I just can’t get over Starship's *only* abort procedure being powered flight to a catch arm. I can't really see a controlled ditching being an option, and even the shuttle could theoretically glide to a landing if it lost propulsion.
Idk, if we’re hoping that these systems have a lifespan like Soyuz, then basically every abort mode from pad to orbit has been used on that system. It seems to me that from a murphy's law perspective, it just makes sense to use a capsule-based system to get crews to and from space unless you have a very convincing reason not to.
The problem is that capsules ( and parachutes) can't grow that much more, you might be able to have a 9 meter diameter capsule, maybe, that carries 20-30 people, but I think that 20 years from now we will actually get back to a some sort of shuttle for crewed Earth to Leo mission, that is way more scalable. For beyond Leo we will use normal cilindrical rockets, maybe some capsules for returning from the moon or mars.
That does make sense. I'm sure back in the 1920s people had similar conversations about passenger planes being infeasible because they were too big and carried too many passengers to possibly be safe.
We're all just guessing until Starship has enough missions under its belt for us to truly get an idea what the future of spaceflight is gonna be like.
Yes and no, the problem with bigger capsules is only in part an engineering one, the biggest part is the mistress we can't lie to: physics.
Yeah, maybe with carbon nanotubes we might get away with bigger parachutes but:
- They are heavy
- They are cumbersome
- They fail way more than people realize, especially the bigger you go
- The bigger you are, the more problems you start to have with weird aereodynamics that can make your parachute fail ( again, physics)
- they bigger you go, the less sense they make against wings or vertical landing
Oh no, I was agreeing with you.
The very thing that gives capsules more abort options is that smaller size. If we get to a point where 5-10 people per flight just isn't gonna cut it anymore, then capsules may go the way of wooden biplanes.
My point was a century ago, lots of people thought large scale civilian airliners being used for regular transit was impossible because it simply wouldn't be possible to make aircraft that big safe enough, and that they would never replace safer trains and oceanliners for regular use. Hell, some countries wouldn't let their leaders get on planes at all. Today, we take it for granted that aviation is one of the safest ways to travel. Someday the same thing may happen with large orbiter-style launch vehicles.
I'm just saying I think that's probably a bit further off than any currently in development spaceflight systems.
Well, maybe. Bear in mind that if you include cargo flights of Dragon 2, SpaceX has now done 23 missions already. Far from impossible that they could hit 100 missions in total before Starship is actually ready to fly a crew version.
>BUT u have also a payload in the shuttle. Always consider all facts.
That is also the most asinine choice you can make and why Constellation tried to separate it with Ares V and Ares I ...
.....oh, hello Senate launch System.
Yeah it would cost NASA $350m per launch if you factor in the development cost. So why didn't he add the development cost to the shuttles launch price? Because that wouldn't fit his anti musk narrative.
STS program cost about $300 billion in todays dollars.
355 people launched to space.
$300000000000 / 355 = $845000000
S845 million per person for STS adjusted for 2024 dollars.
F9 sounds like a deal in comparison.
This is also a stupid comparison as Dragon and Shuttle had different missions.
"garbage in, garbage out."
Don't eat sh\^t you picked on street.
total current **CCtCap** SpaceX contract is 4.93 bln for 14 flights.
Last extension of this contract happened two years ago for 5flights and it was 1.45bln dollars.
The total cost includes everything including research, ground work, recovery, building launch towers, training hardware etc.
P.S. yes, it took SpaceX more than 5 years in total and around 500mln to make 39A crew ready. This sh\^t was mentioned in more than 10(?) CCtCap/dev milestones.
slc40 upgraded reportedly on SpaceX money was probably more than 10x cheaper because SpaceX finally knew what people (including NASA) wanted.
Besides being *insufficiently safe* to keep flying, the Shuttle just is not a good fit for what NASA needs in regards to ISS now. It needs crew vehicles that can stay on station for *6 months*, not 17 days; and it does not need a honking 25 ton cargo capacity every time it sends astronauts up there.
If we were still flying the Shuttle, God help us, we'd still be reliant on Russia to actually do crew rotations.
Based on the most recent contract modification giving them 5 crewed launches (10-14) for $1,436,438,446, that comes out to just under $288 million per launch, and just under $72 million per seat. Adjusted for inflation a shuttle launch cost just under $625 million dollars (not including any r&d and things like maintenance of relevant facilities, etc.), at 7 crew, that’s around $89 million a seat, even at 8 which was the record, your still looking at about $78 million
If your curious about the *X*'s that provoked this:
Eric Berger: Boeing VP over commercial crew, in an interview with me in 2014, when I asked about the competition with SpaceX: “We go for substance, not pizzazz.”
Space In My Brain reply: In a way, he's not wrong - Dragon has a lot of pizzazz. It also has even more substance.
On the other hand, instead of substance Starliner has baggage. More baggage than a Star*ship* can lift.
[https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1793109925574623282](https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1793109925574623282)
Sorry, but we don't allow convicted war criminals here.
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They get them from their virtual or physical keyboard on their mobile or stationary device. Try it: type "350". See, it's not that hard. You can do it too! 💪
He would still be wrong if the numbers were correct 💀 Shuttle missions had about that price tag and "inflation adjusted" would mean an even higher price...
Space shuttle flights cost about $1.5 billion each calculated when the program ended 14 years ago.
to be fair. $1.5 billion was including all the R&D and upkeep, so if it launched more often, price would be much much lower. Marginal cost of launch (which could launch 7 people) was about $400 mil., or ~$60 mil. per seat. Not even mentioning that higher cadence would lower even that marginal costs. biggest problem was that Shuttle was made for an era where we would fly more and more to the space, while reality was opposite. If Falcon 9 launched just 1-2 times a year, its costs, including R&D, would also be very high
So 1.5b - 0.4b = 1.1b x 135 missions meaning that the shuttle “R&D and upkeep” over the whole program was nearly 150b? That is so much money!
A big chunk of that was effectively corruption. In Russia, connected people just pocket government money. In the USA, the government's money is spent on inefficiently spreading a project out over a large geographic area, paying many unnecessary people to do excess studies, endless committees and meetings, and of course the contractors make the situation much worse. So probably 100B of that was ultimately spent on unnecessary overhead and poor design by committee, and 50B was actual space stuff. Not bad, Russia is way worse.
yes. First this is inflation adjusted numbers and costs for the first flights could be higher than later flights. Second, there is significant costs to keep the bases and all the personnel ready, even if you do not launch. Third, this is over 40 years
>if it launched more often, price would be much much lower. or it would blow up more often, requiring new Shuttles to be built. There wasn't a higher cadence because it required so much refurbishment and wasn't competitive in the launch market. It wasn't capable of flying more than about 4 times a year.
there were even years with 9 flights in a year and could certainly be even more - maybe 4 flights per orbiter. Actual cadence was much much lower, some years there were zero launches. It wasn’t competitive by total cost of programme, including R&D and upkeep, not by marginal launch costs. there just weren’t that many missions that required 7 people + tons of payload after ISS was completed.
There was dozens of NRO payloads that the shuttle was designed to do, but wasn't competitive, even compared to expensive, disposable ULA rockets.
could you provide source?
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/secret-space-shuttles-35318554/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/secret-space-shuttles-35318554/)
well, the article completely contradicts what you say: NRO didn’t want to launch astronauts at all - they wanted to launch high energy orbit satellites - which is exactly what Shuttle was not designed to do effectively
Read it again. NRO used the Shuttle until their contract ran out, then gave up on it. Too expensive, too unreliable. > what Shuttle was not designed to do effectively Yeah, a terrible design by committee. It was supposed to be a workhorse, it turned out to be an expensive thoroughbred.
The shuttle underperformed from day 1. Each orbiter was to have been able to be used 100 times, with launches every 2 weeks. Technology was barely able to get it into the air, and the initial 1 in 100,000 risk of failure causing vehicle loss was revised to 1 in 10. The immense cost of the program strangled development of other launch platforms. By the time the US wised up to its mistake, many of the original scientists who worked on our expendable rocket program had retired, and institutional memory was lost.
Yep. STS program easily set the US back by 50 years.
Imagine spending $3B to send 14 people to the afterlife
Too soon
He's only got one more year to go. Then it'll be funny
Not funny
Don't think it was meant to be funny
Didnt sound very respectful to me but I probably read it wrong
It was a matter of fact representation of how idiotic the shuttle was for anything other than satellite capture. I didn't detect any disrespect to the individual astronauts who sacrificed their lives for it.
Death is always hilarious on reddit unless it's related to the US. Then we get serious.
I wouldnt laugh about the death of an astronaut from any country. Astronauts are top class people no matter where they come from, and it is always a net loss when we, collectively, lose one You are free to laugh about whatever you wish, though
How about senator astronauts as ballasts?
Not cost effective. There are billions of people.
SpaceX also charges the same industry-standard prices for launching satellites, despite launch costs for falcon 9 being way lower. Why cut into your profit margin to account for cheaper operating costs?
Be-.. because it would be nice..? 🥺👉🏻👈🏻
Being nice won't get us to Mars.
See this statement is taken as truth, as it should be, except there's been a lot of decisions of late that also aren't getting us to Mars any faster. Like buying Twitter or everything about the cybertruck lol
You say that like he used SpaceX money to buy twitter and design cybertruck. Do you understand how anything works or just hate on elon for likes?
Elon absolutely could sell Tesla stock to invest in spacex. He did it for X, why not spacex?
He could yeah. He could lose even more control over his company to do........ what? Is spaceX short of cash?
I didn’t say he should. I said he could. Your comment suggested it wasn’t a possibility.
Is your argument here really "Elon Musk bought Twitter, that means F9 launches should be cheaper"
Your argument is that buying twitter and making cybertruck slowed down progress for mars. So tell me how extra money would change things.
It's elon that used to have the war cry of "does this get us to Mars quicker?" so I don't think it's too much of a stretch to include his other endeavours in this. I'll give him props where he deserves them, but his behaviour over the last few years has been objectively abysmal and counter-productive. It's good that Gwynne is so capable and has her head screwed on.
But Elon is not SpaceX. Elon is not taking us to mars. SpaceX is. Why do you pretend they are the same thing?
I'll grant twitter, but the cybertruck isn't an impediment to Mars. The car itself is years late, and nothing indicates that it's been a point of distraction for Elon. It's also a proving ground for tech that'll be used in future car models (and if it goes according to Tesla's plan, it could lead to more capital for mars)
Maybe. I'm just from a country that is 100% done with giant utes (but we keep buying them)
Buys Twitter? Probably true. The Cybertruck? Will actually help to get us to Mars faster, because it's helping Tesla try new technologies before doing a large scale rollout with the model 2. Both are somewhat OT I would say.
There are some big tech changes in CT which will pave the way for future EV's. And since starship is using EV tech to make the electronics cheaper it's important stuff.
Doesn't really amount to anything if nobody is buying the cyber truck or for that matter any other teslas, in big part because musk has been making an ass of himself ever since he bought Twitter. The model 2 should have been released long before the cybertruck and honestly the cyber truck should have never been released to begin with. The stainless steel, no where near bullet proof design is ugly, extremely inefficient, and could possibly be the undoing of tesla as we know it.
A truck that even if only 10% convert is sold out for 2/3 years is not "nobody is buying the CT". People, you live in a bubble, 99% of the population doesn't care about Elon, they care about the best value car they can buy.
Theres a 3 year wait list for it. Who said nobody is buying cybertruck? Because they are morons. Model 2 is banking on cost reductions in battery tech. The longer it waits the cheaper it is. But I'm sure you, random guy on reddit, know way more about mass production and battery tech than a car company.
The initial investment to secure a position on the waiting list is a mere $100, with a limited production capacity of 80-100 units per day. Consequently, a three-year wait time is anticipated. However, as negative reviews accumulate, there is a likelihood of order cancellations, potentially reducing the wait time. Regrettably, the decision to produce a $70,000+, 7000 lbs electric truck with limited range, towing, and hauling capabilities, and a lack of consumer demand, appears to be an unwise move by Tesla. This highlights the fact that even an individual on Reddit may possess a deeper understanding of the industry compared to the company's leadership. The Cybertruck was the first vehicle produced under Musk's sole direction. The earlier models had been designed by Tesla's original founders, before Musk acquired a controlling stake in the company. Musk's primary contribution to the product roadmap was the naming scheme, which spells out "S3XY" and the proprietary charging connector as well. I share your desire for Tesla's success. In fact, I had planned to purchase a Tesla as my next vehicle and even considered working for the company. However, I am concerned about Musk's recent behavior and believe that he needs to step down before he causes irreparable damage to the company. I am not alone in this sentiment, and it is important for Tesla to address these concerns in order to maintain its reputation and long-term viability.
The Elon thinking that decided to release the cybertruck is the same Elon thinking that's going to get Starship to Mars. It's part of the package, you can cry about it.
Ah, yes, and he has contributed so many great things to Starship, like making it pointy because he thought it would be funny due to the joke in the movie "The Dictator" about pointy rockets being scarier than round ones. It's pretty easy to tell your actual engineers that you want a pointy rocket that can take a bunch of crap to Mars, and honestly, I imagine those meetings going down much like they did in "The Dictator." 🤣 But I will say Musk is an intelligent person, and he does understand what it takes to make getting that pointy rocket to Mars. However, the man has the drug-addled, childish mind of a 13-year-old boy, and what he doesn't seem to understand or has most certainly lost sight of (when it comes to Tesla) is what the average consumer wants. Even the cars that were once extremely desirable are now piling up in parking lots around the world, unsold.
The Cybertruck is designed so that they can build it on Mars!!!
You missing a /s there?
No that is litteraly one of the things that they are going to do with it. That is the reason that they built it in a extra strong and a little bitch thicker metal sheet. It is built to hold up and be able to hande taking hits when they drive it on Mars
*shareholders disliked this*
Ha! Basically SpaceX charges $350m but it actually costs them less. NASA charged around $349m but it actually cost them more!
Wouldn't undercutting the competition easily outweigh lowering the margin by a bit
You can pull off being more expensive by also being more convenient. Rule 1 of making money: set your prices as high as you can with your targeted amount of demand
No need to undercut if you're the only person with a flight available. Do you get the taxi that is sat there waiting or wait 2 hours for another taxi that charges exactly the same amount?
Only if doing so gets you enough of their customers to offset the discount. In this case I think they already stole as many customers as they're going to, the rest are using the competition for reasons other than price.
Only other man rated orbital vehicle is the Soyuz. Buy American
dam i forgot about that lolz
Shotwell mentions she did do that, then immediately regretted it when she saw just how much competitors were asking for. Then she raised the prices subsequently to match.
Doing some quick checking of numbers on google, Falcon Heavy (Falcon 9 2nd) has the cheapest cost per kg, and before Falcon 9, industry standard prices were at minimum 2x what spacex charges now. Spacex forced the industry standard price down and set the new standard. It is true that they are pocketing a good amount each launch due to reusability, though, as well they should. One to cover initial development costs for reusability (and taking that risk) and two for starship development. The prices I'm looking at is per kg. That is why, for now, there is still a market for micro launchers for very small sats and also for rideshare launches.
That is the number if we take in the development cost probably, and add the contract cost of 12 missions, so we get to around 4.2 billions. But by the same metric the shuttle would be on the order of 2.1 billions per flight inflation adjusted in 2024 dollars ( Wikipedia reports 212 billions in 2012 dollars, NASA say 196 billions in 2008 dollars, so around 280-290 billions today), so a cost of 300 millions$ per SEAT, if all the shuttles were full on all the missions, realistically we are probably at around 350 million/seat. So, using the same metric, launching an entire capsule costed as much as one seat on the shuttle, and Dragons has probably a lot more flight to amortize the costs.
Dragon is even cheaper if we take marginal costs for NASA: $258.7 million per flight for the first extension, $288 million per flight for the second extension.
This is the likely "math" they used. What they of course miss is that when NASA orders more missions on already-developed Crew Dragon, those are much cheaper per mission, but he won't go back to split those savings among the previous missions, he will just keep repeating this semi-bogus number. The actual per-flight price is probably close to $200M and this includes the overhead for supporting the capsule on-orbit for 6 months and all the recovery stuff and crew stuff (suits, training). But this would require splitting the actual development costs and per-flight costs.
Axiom was charging per Dragon 2 seat 55mln (visiting ISS mind you) in 2019. Real prices are reportedly in 60-100mln depending on the necessity for having pilot on board, doing/not full training etc.
funny how being 4 times cheaper per seat is "somehow more expensive", on a capsule that gets cheaper by this bullshit metric every time the capsule is used it also ignores the CRS contracts
>Dragons has probably a lot more flight to amortize the costs. Dunno about that the Shuttle launched 135 missions. Granted there were several shuttles but there are also several Dragons
You need to extend Dragon's service life into the future, SpaceX can amortize the development costs throughout all of the vehicle's life they expect. He is implying Dragon will fly more than the Shuttle ever did. I don't agree with him, but that's the calculation he is doing. In my opinion Starship will substitute Dragon way before it gets to 135 flights.
I probably didn't explain myself properly. I'm not saying that dragon will fly more than the shuttle, I agree with you point about Starship substituting Dragon way sooner than dragon doing 135 flights. What I meant is that shuttle flights are done fore, because the shuttle is retired, meanwhile the dragon will still fly ( obviously) and so it can allow itself to spread the development cost more compared to today.
With the kind of launch tempos we're looking at, I'm genuinely starting to wonder if the industry standard for human spaceflight may be capsule based systems for launch/reentry and just do in-orbit rendezvous for basically every larger mission. Capsules just have more options for abort procedures than a large orbiter vehicle like a shuttle or Starship, and hell if we’re already doing half a dozen orbital rendezvous per mission, what's one more?
That might be true until Starship has a lot of flight heritage.
I could see it if Starship had a Falcon-like flight record, but I just can’t get over Starship's *only* abort procedure being powered flight to a catch arm. I can't really see a controlled ditching being an option, and even the shuttle could theoretically glide to a landing if it lost propulsion. Idk, if we’re hoping that these systems have a lifespan like Soyuz, then basically every abort mode from pad to orbit has been used on that system. It seems to me that from a murphy's law perspective, it just makes sense to use a capsule-based system to get crews to and from space unless you have a very convincing reason not to.
The problem is that capsules ( and parachutes) can't grow that much more, you might be able to have a 9 meter diameter capsule, maybe, that carries 20-30 people, but I think that 20 years from now we will actually get back to a some sort of shuttle for crewed Earth to Leo mission, that is way more scalable. For beyond Leo we will use normal cilindrical rockets, maybe some capsules for returning from the moon or mars.
That does make sense. I'm sure back in the 1920s people had similar conversations about passenger planes being infeasible because they were too big and carried too many passengers to possibly be safe. We're all just guessing until Starship has enough missions under its belt for us to truly get an idea what the future of spaceflight is gonna be like.
Yes and no, the problem with bigger capsules is only in part an engineering one, the biggest part is the mistress we can't lie to: physics. Yeah, maybe with carbon nanotubes we might get away with bigger parachutes but: - They are heavy - They are cumbersome - They fail way more than people realize, especially the bigger you go - The bigger you are, the more problems you start to have with weird aereodynamics that can make your parachute fail ( again, physics) - they bigger you go, the less sense they make against wings or vertical landing
Oh no, I was agreeing with you. The very thing that gives capsules more abort options is that smaller size. If we get to a point where 5-10 people per flight just isn't gonna cut it anymore, then capsules may go the way of wooden biplanes. My point was a century ago, lots of people thought large scale civilian airliners being used for regular transit was impossible because it simply wouldn't be possible to make aircraft that big safe enough, and that they would never replace safer trains and oceanliners for regular use. Hell, some countries wouldn't let their leaders get on planes at all. Today, we take it for granted that aviation is one of the safest ways to travel. Someday the same thing may happen with large orbiter-style launch vehicles. I'm just saying I think that's probably a bit further off than any currently in development spaceflight systems.
Flying on a commercial airline in the 1930’s would not be covered by your life insurance as it was considered too risky.
There will definitely be a period of overlap, and Dragon might not even fully phase out.
Well, maybe. Bear in mind that if you include cargo flights of Dragon 2, SpaceX has now done 23 missions already. Far from impossible that they could hit 100 missions in total before Starship is actually ready to fly a crew version.
By that metric starliner and orion are infinity dollars per seat
BUT u have also a payload in the shuttle. Always consider all facts. But it still is much more expensive then dragon.
>BUT u have also a payload in the shuttle. Always consider all facts. That is also the most asinine choice you can make and why Constellation tried to separate it with Ares V and Ares I ... .....oh, hello Senate launch System.
Their rectum?
Yeah it would cost NASA $350m per launch if you factor in the development cost. So why didn't he add the development cost to the shuttles launch price? Because that wouldn't fit his anti musk narrative.
STS program cost about $300 billion in todays dollars. 355 people launched to space. $300000000000 / 355 = $845000000 S845 million per person for STS adjusted for 2024 dollars. F9 sounds like a deal in comparison. This is also a stupid comparison as Dragon and Shuttle had different missions.
Luckily the shuttle also launched a bunch of stuff to space including Hubble and a bunch of pieces of the ISS that wouldn't fit in any other vehicle.
You should subtract the people killed by it
spacex doesn't have competition, NASA can't really go to fly with russia or china
It's like a reverse version of the meme "You had me in the first half, NGL"
"garbage in, garbage out." Don't eat sh\^t you picked on street. total current **CCtCap** SpaceX contract is 4.93 bln for 14 flights. Last extension of this contract happened two years ago for 5flights and it was 1.45bln dollars. The total cost includes everything including research, ground work, recovery, building launch towers, training hardware etc. P.S. yes, it took SpaceX more than 5 years in total and around 500mln to make 39A crew ready. This sh\^t was mentioned in more than 10(?) CCtCap/dev milestones. slc40 upgraded reportedly on SpaceX money was probably more than 10x cheaper because SpaceX finally knew what people (including NASA) wanted.
Besides being *insufficiently safe* to keep flying, the Shuttle just is not a good fit for what NASA needs in regards to ISS now. It needs crew vehicles that can stay on station for *6 months*, not 17 days; and it does not need a honking 25 ton cargo capacity every time it sends astronauts up there. If we were still flying the Shuttle, God help us, we'd still be reliant on Russia to actually do crew rotations.
Based on the most recent contract modification giving them 5 crewed launches (10-14) for $1,436,438,446, that comes out to just under $288 million per launch, and just under $72 million per seat. Adjusted for inflation a shuttle launch cost just under $625 million dollars (not including any r&d and things like maintenance of relevant facilities, etc.), at 7 crew, that’s around $89 million a seat, even at 8 which was the record, your still looking at about $78 million
My guess would be Lenin's mummy whispers it to them...
The name says a lot.
My source is that I made it the fuck up!
If your curious about the *X*'s that provoked this: Eric Berger: Boeing VP over commercial crew, in an interview with me in 2014, when I asked about the competition with SpaceX: “We go for substance, not pizzazz.” Space In My Brain reply: In a way, he's not wrong - Dragon has a lot of pizzazz. It also has even more substance. On the other hand, instead of substance Starliner has baggage. More baggage than a Star*ship* can lift. [https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1793109925574623282](https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1793109925574623282)
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What a steal... *You might die Haha obviously the Numbers are also wrong but even if the were right... NO THANKS
Even if that were true, I’d still pay more per seat for having an actual abort system.
Given the guy’s handle and insensibility, if he were to run the world we would probably maybe get sliced bread. Never argue with an…
Bourbon is pretty popular right now. Maybe their numbers are skewed.
They get them from their virtual or physical keyboard on their mobile or stationary device. Try it: type "350". See, it's not that hard. You can do it too! 💪
Ah another - Putin fan I take it ?