Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby

Friday, 31 March 2017

SpaceX's costs are falling, but by how much ?

“The next thing is to try and figure out how do we achieve very rapid reuse with minimal refurbishment, and without any sort of hardware changes on the vehicle,” Musk said. “Our aspiration will be zero hardware changes (with) a reflight in 24 hours, and the only thing that changes is we reload propellant,” Musk said. “We might get there toward the end of this year, but if not this year, I’m confident we’ll get there next year.”

Officials have not disclosed how much of a discount SES received to be the first customer to fly on one of SpaceX’s reused boosters. Musk aims for a 100-fold reduction in launch costs in the long run, but the pricing effects will be more modest in the beginning. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, said last year the company will initially offer a 10 percent discount to clients willing to put their payloads on previously-flown rockets.

“It will be a meaningful discount,” Musk said, without citing a number. “We’ll figure out some way to pay off the development costs of reusability, so the price discount won’t be as much as the cost savings because we need to repay the massive development cost. But it will certainly be less than the price of our current rockets, and will be far lower than any other rocket in the world,” Musk added.

SpaceX says a regular commercial launch of a Falcon 9 rocket now costs about $62 million, already making it the least expensive option in its lift category.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/03/31/spacex-flies-rocket-for-second-time-in-historic-test-of-cost-cutting-technology/

1 comment:

  1. Clearly; rather than giving a discount; they should market them as "Space Proven Rockets".

    ReplyDelete

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