Yet a quick Internet search discloses that a round-trip nonstop coach ticket between LAX and SYD costs $1,068; 40 times that is $42,720—a far cry from the commercial price for a ride on a Russian capsule to the International Space Station—currently the only commercial service available—at $70,000,000–$80,000,000, round-trip. Hopefully, a steep drop in costs will lead to something closer to a 24 percent market nominal growth rate for launch until space launch goes from a single-digit billion market to a multi-trillion solar-system market like the global market for airlines.
This calculation is rough because they are comparing the energy cost of a one-way trip and the retail cost of a round trip. As originally planned, the freighter had Given the messianic nature of the exodus aspirations of Musk, would-be Mars settlers can reasonably hope that the SpaceX price for that market will be close to marginal cost. A price of $74,490 would be fine for me for the trip even if it costs $3,000 a night for lodging for a 25-night stay. The first is vastly expanding supply via execution of ambitious new plans for low-cost reusable launch systems from SpaceX, Blue Origin, and others.
That leads to a cost of $2,719 per kilogram. List prices for space travel will remain in tens of millions for a while, and the millions even with multiple launch companies with low-cost launch systems. I will not wait for a fare sale at $42,720. Fuel. It struck me that if SpaceX’s Super Heavy and Starship meet Elon Musk’s ambitious cost goals, then a mature-market cost may be able to arrive sooner than people think—but not necessarily a mature-market ticket price. We can hope launch industry growth is better than Note: we are temporarily moderating all comments subcommitted to deal with a surge in spam.A solo flight to orbit will likely continue to cost tens of millions of dollars well after launch costs drop below ten million per launch. Launch costs refer to the cost of sending a payload from the ground to outer space, specifically low Earth orbit (LEO). For a satellite weighing up to 330 pounds, the base cost is $2.25 million, according to SpaceX. (That is based on a rough energy-only calculation, ignoring the fact that the aircraft does not have to carry its own oxidizer, the harsher environment of space compared to the atmosphere, and other challenges. Bigelow announced a round-trip package deal, including lodging, to the ISS
If the cost is less than $100,000 per seat and the revenue is $4–40 million or more per seat, then getting to a mature market is a matter of two factors. As long as demand for people (or satellites) to go to orbit exceeds supply by a wide margin if the market price was near cost, the ticket price will reflect the demand curve rather than the supply curve. The second is price competition. Without competition, we can expect the lower cost to result in market bifurcation between low-price-elasticity customers, like NASA and DoD, and high-price-elasticity customers.
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