I’ve heard numbers such as $200/kg to LEO for Starship. I’m trying to understand this.
I figure that the Falcon Heavy is already about 96.5% reusable (at least 27 of 28 engines are reused). Based on the recent Roman telescope deal ($255M), Falcon Heavy costs $4000/kg.
How is Starship, which is basically only 3.5% “more reusable”, going to cost 20X less? Is methane massively better than RP5? Is stainless steel way better than aluminum? Is it because it’s taller? Fatter? Is it the tower catch? Is it because the booster returns to the launch pad instead of landing on a drone ship?
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For Starship the key thing is achieving a “fully and rapidly reusable” second stage. At this time no second stage is reusable.
Methane engines will combust “cleaner” with RP1 you have to worry about coking and soot in the engines, Merlin engines on the Falcon 9 need to be cleaned between launches.
Stainless steel is cheap, it has better strength and other properties the temperature ranges needed for a fully reusable conditions. (Cryogenic temperatures and reentry heating)
When you have a bigger rocket a proportionally smaller amount of the mass you’re lofting to orbit is “rocket” when you increase the diameter of a cylinder the volume on the interior increases much more rapidly than the surface area does.
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