Questions tagged [cost-to-orbit]
Questions regarding the amount of money required to send a mass into Earth orbit.
46 questions
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What's the conversion rate from cost/mass to LEO to other orbits of note?
OWID gives a price of 1500 per kg to LEO via the Falcon Heavy, and other prices for other launch vehicles. Estimates for Starship vary wildly, but $100 per kg seems like a reasonable middle-of-the-...
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Were top-ranked launch propulsion technologies, TBCC and RBCC, already flight-proven in 2012 when the NASA Space Technology report was published?
The publication, "NASA Space Technology Roadmaps and Priorities: Restoring NASA's Technological Edge and Paving the Way for a New Era in Space (2012)" states that NASA's top technical ...
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When a rocket company publishes a list price for a launch, is that what a customer can expect to pay, or are additional fees typically added on?
The kinds of "additional fees" that I'm thinking of might include things like sales tax, "spaceport fees", mandatory insurance, etc. I'm trying to get a sense of how much a company ...
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What happened to the Atlantis Project?
I recently saw Isaac Arthur video part of the upward bound serious about tether rings. There he mentioned a project known as the Atlantis project which is trying to get a tethered ring built in real ...
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How do space launch providers calculate how many millipeople a rocket launch could kill?
I was intrigued by this post which states... To get a license you have to show that your launch will kill no more than ~1 milliperson, which usually means not flying close to population centers. I ...
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Does it economically cost the same to launch a satellite into LEO and GTO?
I was doing some research about how much $/kg it costs to launch a satellite into GEO. I came across several sources that lists info for LEO: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cost-space-launches-low-...
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Could Starship lift mass to orbit (both low and geo-stationary) cheaper than a skyhook?
In response to this question which appears to ask only about space elevators and not skyhooks, would Starship's cost per kilogram to LE or Geo-stationary orbits be lower than a skyhook's? I ask only ...
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Would Starship be able to lift mass to orbit (both low and geo-stationary) cheaper than "any" space elevator?
A comment to an answer to a question about Mars missions stated that using Starship to launch mass to orbit would be cheaper than a space elevator. I didn't imagine that. I know that space elevators ...
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1answer
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Why aren't more companies manufacturing the RS-25 (Space Shuttle Main Engine)?
The RS-25 is a great engine with a terrific ISP. It was used 42 years ago (on April 12th 1981) for the first Space Shuttle flight; therefore, the most of the patents on it must have expired long ago. ...
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What figure-of-merit (FoM) is used to characterize the performance of a launch system's reentry-and-landing system?
I'd like to make a table that compares the performance of different launch systems such as The Space Shuttle, Falcon 9 plus Crew Dragon, and Starship. Engine ISP and thrust-to-weight ratio would be ...
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What conferences have technical sessions that cover credible and transformative alternatives to chemical-rocket-based launch?
Constraints Some examples of such technologies are described on Wikipedia's Non-Rocket Spacelaunch page. But, to clarify a bit further... I found list of such technologies in Figure 2.1 of a document ...
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Cost and quantity of space mission in 2020s vs 1980s?
Today we have 50 times as many satellites in orbit as in the 1980s and the price of space equipment has come down; however, we have a thousand times fewer satellites orbiting far away space bodies ...
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Why was the Saturn V several times as expensive as falcon heavy despite only having twice its payload?
Saturn V could lift 140 tons to low earth orbit, Falcon Heavy can lift 64 (expendable configuration). But Saturn V cost several times more per launch. Why?
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Why is so much money spent on launching government communications satellites?
A lot of money is spent on launching government communications satellites that aren’t useful to the public. What is the use for these satellites and why are they considered important enough to use ...
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How did the cost of delivery of cargo into orbit change with technology maturation?
I had an argument with my friend recently about the effect of technology maturation on spaceflight cost. In the process, I managed to find this infographic: Image source The trend for cost reduction ...
