Elon Musk: Starship rocket launch may cost as little as $2 million

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says the operating costs of launching a single Starship rocket could be about $2 million. That is many times lower than the costs currently incurred for an average rocket launch.

Elon Musk says $900,000 in fuel is needed to lift the Starship rocket off the ground and into orbit, Space.com writes. “If you consider the operating costs, it might cost us $2 million,” Musk said. He emphasized that this cost is already much lower than the costs associated with launching a very small rocket. The Starship rocket, on the other hand, will be a relatively large rocket that will eventually also take people to Mars.

The amount mentioned is probably a rough estimate of the costs and is in any case not the amount that SpaceX will charge customers per launch. It is not yet known how high that amount will be. Currently, SpaceX charges about $62 million for a Falcon 9 launch and $90 million for each time the Falcon Heavy rocket goes up.

Impression of the Starship rocket

Musk again emphasized the importance of having a reusable rocket; the company is already focusing on reusability with the partially reusable parts of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. SpaceX is also making progress in recovering and reusing the relatively expensive nose cones of the Falcon rockets. Landing and reusing the first rocket stage of these rockets can now be called routine, but that does not yet apply to the second rocket stage; it is still scrapped after a launch.

The Starship rocket promises to be fully reusable, which is associated with its design. The large rocket will consist of two parts: the lower rocket stage called Super Heavy and the upper part, in fact a spaceship called Starship. Super Heavy will definitely get 35 Raptor methane rocket engines and Starship will get six. Both rocket stages must land vertically, with Super Heavy landing back on Earth and Starship heading toward the Moon or Mars, for example. Both parts have to be reused many times, which contributes greatly to the estimation of the low costs.

Elon Musk often makes optimistic statements, but with the current Falcon rockets, SpaceX is already a lot cheaper than average rocket launches from other companies. Should that two million dollars not materialize and the amount is higher, the costs will still be much lower than what a launch of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket under development will cost, for example. A single launch of this large, non-reusable rocket is likely to cost between $1 and 2.5 billion.

Impression of the Space Launch System rocket