Wccftech by Ramish Zafar 5/8/2020
Following NASA's decision to award three companies a contract to manufacture and design human landing systems for the moon's surface, interest in Hawthorne, California-based aeronautics corporation SpaceX's Starship launch and landing vehicles has been refreshed. Starship, which was initially referred to as the 'Big Fat Rocket' by SpaceX management, is the company's competitor to Boeing's Space Launch System. The SLS is planned to do most of the heavy lifting of NASA's Artemis missions spanning this decade, and SpaceX, as always will look to provide the space agency with a more affordable solution as reliable as the company's Falcon 9 rocket lineup.
To that end, SpaceX chief design engineer and top executive Elon Musk took to Twitter for comments on expected launch costs for Starship. The landing vehicle's original design intended it to undertake a flight to Mars, with in-orbital refueling to aid it after exiting earth gravity. As opposed to Boeing's Orion crew vehicle, Starship is capable of exiting the moon's orbit on its own, and SpaceX's strong performance in the Technical area of NASA's evaluation of human landing system attests the agency's confidence in the company's ability to execute such complex missions.
SpaceX Hopeful To Drive Down Starship's Orbital Launch Cost To $1.5 Million Per Mission States Elon Musk
In statements made on Twitter on Thursday night, Mr. Musk entertained the possibility of bringing down launch costs for the Starship platform by capitalizing on economies of scale. The executive believes that for flights that are made to low earth orbit, Starship and its Super Heavy launch vehicle will cost $1 million/launch, provided that fuel costs are eliminated. With fuel, Mr. Musk hopes that SpaceX will be able to bring down costs to $150,000/launch – for a total sum of $1.5 million when delivering 150 tons to orbit.
More:
https://wccftech.com/spacex-launch-costs-down-musk/
