What makes SpaceX Starship so cheap?

New SpaceX Rocket Starship will be a revolutionary thing in the space industry. Why? Elon Musk Space company, thanks to Starship will significantly lower the price of space transportation, which will cause many new possibilities in space flights and space exploration at all! What makes SpaceX's Starship so cheap? How much does a starship cost?

Space Shuttle - Cost per Launch: approximately $1.5 billion
Space X Starship Price - Cost per Launch: approximately $2 million

How is it possible that a private company was able to reduce the cost of space transportation that much? and How it possible that starship is so cheap? About this and much more in today’s video.

Starship is a revolutionary thing in the entire space industry. It will reduce the cost of transporting cargo and people into space, enable Earth to Earth passenger spaceflight, put humans on the Moon and also it will be used to transport the first crewed mission to Mars. Before we answer the question “Why starship is so cheap?”, let's take a closer look at the rocket itself. The Starship system is made of two parts — the Starship spacecraft is stock on a rocket booster called Super Heavy.The first stage of the starship system, named super heavy booster, will be bringing the Starship spacecraft into the earth's orbit. For this purpose, the booster will be using the 37 raptor engine, powered by sub-cooled liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellants. After lifting into orbit the booster and the spacecraft will separate and the Super Heavy booster will be returning to land at the launch site. After that, starship spacecraft will be able to transport the cargo or crew to the target destination and then return to the Earth. As you can see, Both Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster are fully reusable, so they could be used many times without any problem.

The low price of Straship will cause revolution in space exploration. SpaceX has already announced Interplanetary Transport System, which enables Earth to Earth passenger spaceflight. In additions, the new SpaceX rocket will be transporting humans far beyond the earth, to the destination like ISS, Moon or even Mars.

Photos / videos credit: SpaceX / NASA
Starship Fuel Video - C-bass Productions
Other video/photo content - Pexels / Pixabay / Wikimedia Commons

[charruaporelmundo]

My humble believe of the why’s, is that Nasa was just paying what those companies ( contractors) were billing to them? Maybe the real cost was just a fraction of what Nasa did pay.

[stevefacer]

More likely a good example of government doing something versus private industry doing something.

[traumajock]

The narrator sounds like Father Guido Sarducci.

[Spedley_]

Obviously the biggest cost reduction is the reuse and this is totally down to computers/software being able to return the craft. What Musk brought to the table was embracing the new possibilities of modern manufacturing and restarting the whole space race with a design focused on manufacture, rather than perfection. Launches used to be a one-shot affair - all or nothing - and so the time and money was spent on ensuring success. Modern manufacture and reuse totally change this so that not only is the rocket cheap to build but it now makes sense to split the payload and launch multiple times instead.

[henryhbk]

Another key feature of using Stainless Steel isn't just the materials cost, but the manufacturing techniques. Essentially this is all super mature manufacturing (giant carbon-fiber is still hard to do right, as opposed to huge steel structures is every day manufacturing). For all the refuel-and-go skeptics the Falcon 9 essentially does just that (heck they don't even wash the soot off) sure they inspect, but that's hardly expensive (I worked on some of the SRB refurbishment for the shuttle and it was super complicated)

[nick]

Well first of all Starship has not gone to space yet. So what is the point?

[econdude]

What a fantastic video. I would add, that every so often, the rocket will be improved. One example of this has already happened, using 3mm walls instead of 4mm walls. This will lead to even more cargo being launched per trip, or a reduced amount of fuel needed to launch the same amount of cargo.

[toddabbott]

To get 2 million he has to mass produce the rockets... as in making hundreds to offset the development costs. The second key is each rocket needs to survive a MINIMUM of around 100 lunches to reach that price. Elon is targeting 1000, but I think this is EXTREMELY optimistic. I also question if he will be able to maintain more than a fleet of 10-20 as the idea of using these for intercontinental flights scares the crap out of me on an environmental level... and I'm am not a tree-hugger at all. He wants to increase the number of rocket launches in the world 1000 fold. That can not be good.

[Hogger]

You explanation of reusability as the reason Starship is so cheap doesn't wash. With the Shuttle the only thing that wasn't reusable was the liquid fuel tank, so there has to be many other factors involved that you haven't mentioned.

[zagijimzoo]

wikipedia: The exact breakdown into non-recurring and recurring costs is not available, but, according to NASA, the average cost to launch a Space Shuttle as of 2011 was about $450 million per mission.

[grumpyfinn]

no fckn way.... 2m, ur math is off, the shuttle's cost has development cost factored in, starship obviously not... this videro is bs

[NeverTalkToCops]

Nope. $2.5 million won't even launch a bad sandwich into space.

[WienerDogSuprise]

Super Heavy will utilize twenty-nine Raptors initially, ramping up to thirty-two along the development path.

[interstellar]

Some serious lack of vision on this thread. It's a good thing people like Musk arent detered by the cant-do-its of the world.

[cockpeatdarkhole]

When Starship + Super Heavy have his first Orbital flight, than we can say, , ,its real and funktional", Not before.

Speak about it in 2...3...4 Months....

[jip]

Earth to earth travel should be “intraplanetary” i stead of “interplanetary

[vincepc]

Starship costs are much more than 2M… this is Elonia clickbait.

[ModeratelyAmused]

You have a deep understanding of how SpaceX keeps it's cost down but have no clue why NASA's projects were so expensive. It's the same reason the U.S. government pays $100 for $3 hammers and $600 for $15 toilet seats. It's called bureaucracy. Every purchase NASA made had to go through government approved vendors. Every item they made had to follow a Bible of government regulations. It's when manufacturing still existed in the U.S. and many Senators were making deals to approve NASA's increasing budget if they buy parts from a manufacturer at inflated prices in each Senator's state. There isn't a single thing the government can do for Americans cheaper and/or better quality than the free market.

[georgysb]

What makes SpaceX Starship so cheap? The fact it doesn't exist yet!

[davejones]

NASA has been wasting all our money when a private company can build way more affordable, effective, and efficient rockets.