spacex launch cost comparison spacex launch cost comparison

Likely no flight before ~ 2026 however", "With Eye on SpaceX, CNES Begins Work on Reusable Rocket Stage", "The Ariane 6 debut is slipping again as Europe hopes for a late 2022 launch", "Shotwell: Reusable Falcon 9 Would Cost $5 to $7 Million Per Launch", "Spacex BFR to be lower cost than Falcon 1 at $7 million per launch", "Elon Musk says SpaceX's Starship could fly for as little as $2 million per launch", "Smallsat launch providers face pricing pressure from Chinese vehicles", "Price swings expected during launch industry shakeout", "SpaceX launched the most mass to orbit in the first quarter of 2020 nearly three times as much China, which was the second highest and just ahead of Russia", "Battle of the Heavyweight Rockets -- SLS could face Exploration Class rival", "Musk goes for methane-burning reusable rockets as step to colonise Mars", "SpaceX's Starhopper completes test flight", "Trump on Falcon Heavy: "I'm so used to hearing different numbers with NASA", "Arianespace consolidates leadership in commercial launch market with 15 successful Ariane, Soyuz and Vega launches in 2021 and revenue growth of 30%, while gearing up for another busy year", "SpaceX's biggest competitor is a company you've never heard of", "Satellite Orders Drop but Near-term Launch Manifests Are Full", "Launch & Satellite Contract Review: High-throughput Helps Boost Satellite Orders", "Arianespace, SpaceX Battled to a Draw for 2014 Launch Contracts", "World Satellite Business Week 2014: A rich harvest of contracts for Arianespace", "Europe's Arianespace Claims 60% Of The Commercial Launch Market", "Launch of First GPS 3 Satellite Now Not Expected Until 2017", "As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist", "China Is Quickly Becoming a Space Superpower", "SpaceX's GPS contract modified to allow reuse of Falcon 9 boosters", "Lockheed-Boeing venture lays off 12 executives in major reorganization", "Airbus dans la Silicon Valley: une occasion manque pour l'Europe", "Airbus Group starts $150 mln venture fund, Silicon Valley base", "In a first, Bengaluru startups on Airbus radar for mentoring business ideas under BizLabs", "SpaceX launches clandestine Zuma satellite questions over spacecraft's health", "France, Germany studying reusability with a subscale flyback booster", "The Annual Compendium of Commercial Space Transportation: 2018", "Russia appears to have surrendered to SpaceX in the global launch market", "Block 5 rocket launch marks the end of the beginning for SpaceX", "With Block 5, SpaceX to increase launch cadence and lower prices", "Four huge rockets are due to debut in 2020will any make it? Musk predicted that one Starship rocket launch could cost a few million dollars in the future. Russia has the ability to launch a dozen or more times with Proton doing both government and commercial missions, but has operated at a slower cadence the past few years due to launch failures and [the] discovery of an incorrect material used in some rocket engines. It is important to remember that small-lift launchers are never . Visualizing the Global Share of U.S. Stock Markets. Many of the cited sources directly provide cost-per-kilogram estimates for launches to LEO. This move further strengthens SpaceXs competitiveness in the commercial launch market. "[34] SpaceX charges a little less for launches with a reused booster, so if the second launch carried a payload for a paying customer, SpaceX gets $50 million. This data repository accompanies Appendix 1ofBoost-Phase Missile Defense: Interrogating the Assumptions,a featured report from theCSIS Missile Defense Project. In this data repository, the per-kilogram launch cost provided in the interactive chart is typically the unit flyaway cost, a term borrowed from the aviation industry and defined in the Definitions subsection of this page. [115], While vehicle launch cost is a metric utilized when comparing vehicles, the cost per lb/kg launched is also an important factor that is not always directly correlated with the overall launch vehicle cost. We encourage corrections, additions, and suggestions. [29], In August 2014, Eutelsat, the third-largest fixed satellite services operator worldwide by revenue, indicated that it planned to spend approximately 100 million less each year in the next three years, due to lower prices for launch services and by transitioning their commsats to electric propulsion. SpaceX began testing the return of its first stage for reuse in 2013 and has greatly succeeded with this endeavour. [31], In October 2014, ULA announced a major restructuring of processes and workforce with the stated objective to decrease launch costs by half. Although space launch vehicles are often described by their. If you bear in mind that these figures are from 2015, and the Falcon 9 price has dropped from $4,000. The Saturn V cost $185 million per launch at the time, or about $1.25 billion in today's money, because each rocket was single-use. COO Gwynne Shotwell said the cost savings "came even though SpaceX did extensive work to examine and refurbish the stage. But that rocket costs at least $350 million per launch several times more expensive than SpaceX's new and reusable $90 million Falcon Heavy system. By mid-2018, with Proton flying as few as two launches in an entire year, the Russian state corporation Roscosmos announced they would retire the Proton launch vehicle, in part due to competition from lower-cost launch alternatives. Harry W. Jones, The Recent Large Reduction in Space Launch Cost, Albuquerque, New Mexico: 48th International Conference on Environmental Systems, ICES-2018-81, July 8-12, 2018, https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20200001093.pdf. Both the addition of new small launch vehicles to the market (Rocket Lab, Firefly, Vector, and several Chinese service providers) and the addition of new capacity of rideshare services are putting price pressure on existing providers. [83], Before 2014, Arianespace had dominated the commercial launch market for many years. [11], In March 2017, SpaceX reused an orbital booster stage that had been previously launched, landed and recovered, stating the cost to the company of doing so "was substantially less than half the cost" of a new first stage. . [67][68] Responding to competitive pressures, one stated objective of Ariane Next is to reduce Ariane launch cost by a factor of two beyond improvements brought by Ariane 6. In particular it is the trend of competitive dynamics among payload transport capabilities at diverse prices having a greater influence on launch purchasing than the traditional political considerations of country of manufacture or the national entity using, regulating or licensing the launch service. But how much does it cost to launch a cargo rocket into space, and how has this cost changed over the years? Last month, however, SpaceX announced that it will raise the price of . When the contracts for the Commercial Crew Program were awarded in 2014, Boeing received the lion's share, slightly more than 60 percent of the $6.8 billion NASA awarded, getting $4.2 billion . 'Therefore, things have to change - and the European industry is being restructured, consolidated, rationalised and streamlined.' This is quite different from how dual-launch manifested contracts have been previously handled by Arianespace (Ariane V and Ariane 6) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (H-IIA and H3). The SSLV is likely to cost about $4 million to $6 million per launch compared to the $16 million to $25 million for a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), which is India's workhorse. In the graphic above we take a look at the cost per kilogram for space launches across the globe since 1960, based on data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "[40] The Washington Post said that the changes occasioned from multiple competing service providers resulted in a revolution in innovation. 345. In 2018 he said the rocket would cost no more than $150 million to loft heavy payloads into orbit. By 2018 the Russian launch service market share was projected to shrink to about 10% of the world's commercial launch market. Falcon 9 NAFCOM Cost Estimate Comparison (All Costs Are In FY2010 $$)M) . If the same space launch vehicle were to support a different mission to LEO, such as one that requires a higher altitude or inclination, the payload capacity would be reduced. But CNBC noted in 2020 that the United States Air Force contracts paid around $95 million per Falcon 9 launch. . The Sun has about 5,000 million more years before it reaches its red giant stage, but when that happens, it will likely expand to the point where it swallows up the Earth. Their exact life span depends on their size, with bigger stars burning out faster than their smaller counterparts. No government financing is being provided for either rocket. Companies now faced economic incentives rather than the principally political incentives of the earlier decades. The Sun is the powerhouse of life here on Earthits energy provides our planet with a mild, warm climate that keeps us alive, keeping the Earth from becoming a frozen rock. After the mid-2010s, prices for smallsat and cubesat launch services began to decline significantly. "[74], According to an industry panel interviewed in October 2018, an industry shakeout is expected between 2019 and 2021 due to the excess supply compared to demand. "[87], Overall in 2014 Arianespace took 60% of commercial launch market share. Walter E. Hammond, Space Transportation: a Systems Approach to Analysis and Design (Reston: AIAA, 1999), 407, https://doi.org/10.2514/4.862380. Estimating costs for space launch vehicles is rarely straightforward. SpaceX, the pioneering rocket launch company founded by Elon Musk, famously advertises a launch cost of just $62 million for its Falcon 9 rocket -- a price it has held steady for four and a half . 2.815 billion was slated to be provided by various European government sources at the time the early finance structure was made public in April 2015. For example, the cost per launch of a PSLV rocket is $18 million to $28 million, the cost per launch of GSLV is $47 million, and GSLV Mark III is $51 million. Published on: October 13, 2022. Blue Origin announced in 2018 they intend to contract for launch services a bit differently than the contract options that have been traditionally offered in the commercial launch market. if we look at the price of comparable launch systems, we can see that in terms of kg delivered to LEO, the Falcon 9 is pretty good. In March 2022, it emerged it could cost up to $4.1 billion. Due to these discrepancies, the data source is provided in the interactive chart on a vehicle-by-vehicle basis. Estimating costs for space launch vehicles is rarely straightforward. [54] Elon Musk said SpaceX's Starship launches will cost less than $10 million within 2-3 years. Assesses NASA, other civil agencies, and private space companies. While stars emit energy for years, its important to note that they dont shine for eternity. Mark Wade, Thor Delta E, Astronautix, accessed August 31, 2020, http://www.astronautix.com/t/thordeltae.html. Matt Williams, Falcon Heavy Vs. Saturn V, Universe Today, July 25, 2016, https://www.universetoday.com/129989/saturnv-vs-falcon-heavy/. . Making the Starship reusable cuts the cost per launch hugely, making space exploration and activity much more affordable. NASA could switch entirely to the Atlas V for future Cygnus flights. With fuel, Mr. Musk hopes that SpaceX will be able to bring down costs to $150,000/launch - for a total sum of $1.5 million when delivering 150 tons to orbit. most often Small, Medium, and Heavythere is no universally accepted definition for the boundaries between these classes. The usual approach is to compare launch costs per kilogram by dividing the total cost per flight by the maximum payload delivered to LEO. [39] And by 2019, ULA, with their next-generation, lower-cost Vulcan/Centaur launch vehicle, was one of four launch companies competing for the US military's multi-year block-buy contract for 20222026 against SpaceX (Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy), Northrop Grumman (Omega), and Blue Origin (New Glenn), where only the SpaceX vehicles are currently flying and the other three are all slated to make their initial launch in 2021. One of the reasons given for the restructuring and new cost reduction goals was competition from SpaceX. [94][failed verification], According to one Arianespace managing director in 2015, "'It's quite clear there's a very significant challenge coming from SpaceX,' he said. Reusability allows SpaceX to refly the most expensive parts of the rocket, which in turn drives down the cost of space access . [38] By May 2015, the SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.1 was certified by the USAF to compete to launch many of the expensive satellites which are considered essential to US national security. Plus, Delta IV Heavy can only lift half as . Despite SpaceX prices being somewhat lower than Long March prices, the Chinese Government and the Great Wall Industry companywhich markets the Long March for commsat missionsmade a policy decision to maintain commsat launch prices at approximately US$70 million. The RETALT project funding of 3 million was provided to the German Space Agency and five European companies to fund a study to "tackle the shortcoming of know-how in reusable rockets in Europe. We may never find out. In addition, Arianespace signed their largest launch contract everfor 21 LEO launches for OneWeb using the Europeanized Russian Soyuz launch vehicle launching from the ESA spaceportand two Vega smallsat launches. [10], SpaceNews journalist Peter B. [11], The launch of the US Air Force's first GPS III satellite is expected no earlier than 2017 rather than 2016 as originally planned. which can cost up to $165 million. Special thanks to Mariel de la Garza for her work developing this tool. In early 2018, SpaceNews reported that "[t]he rise of SpaceX has disrupted the launch industry at large. SpaceX per-satellite manufacturing and launch costs will be much lower than those of Telesat, but it will cost them more to make and launch 12,000 satellites than it will cost Telesat to make and launch 298. . [26] Continuing to face "stiff competition on price",[13] in April seven European satellite operator companiesincluding the four largest in the world by annual revenueasked that the ESA, "find immediate ways to reduce Ariane 5 rocket launch costs and, in the longer term, make the next-generation Ariane 6 vehicle more attractive for smaller telecommunications satellites. Although the Falcon Heavy looks similar to a Delta 4 Heavy, its performance is much higher and, simultaneously, its cost per launch is much lower. That means the total revenue from two launches of that booster is $112 million ($62M + $50M), while the total cost to SpaceX is only $65 million ($50M + $15M). But launch services aren't produce, and the conventional way of assessing launch costs on a dollars-per-kilogram basis isn't a good measure of the cost of launch. to LEO for a space launch vehicle is simply the highest mass capacity reported by a launch provider. In the interactive chart above, use the Show Cost In input field to toggle between current-year dollars and then-year dollars. Other national space agenciessuch as China's CNSA[1] [15] However, by March 2016 it had become clear that the new Vulcan launch vehicle would be developed with funding via a publicprivate partnership with the US government. Cubesat launches that had previously cost US$350400 thousand had declined by March 2018 to US$250 thousand, and prices were continuing to decline. The low launch prices offered by the company,[23] especially for communication satellites flying to geostationary (GTO) orbit, resulted in market pressure on its competitors to lower their prices. While private satellite manufacturing companies had previously raised large capital rounds, that has been the largest investment to date in a launch service provider. So, out of the three vehicles currently being used to bring NASA astronauts to the ISS, Crew Dragon is the cheapest and Starliner the most expensive, but not significantly more so than Soyuz. SpaceX's Falcon 9 now advertises a cost of $62 million to launch 22,800 kg to LEO, $2,720/kg. We encourage corrections, additions, and suggestions. "[110] The country is doing this separately from the normal intergovernmental projects of the European Space Agency, where France also plays a major role since the ESA founding. NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), designed in collaboration with Boeing, has so far cost nearly triple the $10-billion projected development cost when it was first announced in 2011. USAF awarded 60% of the contract to ULA and 40% to SpaceX. This interactive data repository is a product of the Andreas C. Dracopoulos iDeas Lab, the in-house digital, multimedia, and design agency at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. [33], By November 2014, SpaceX had "already begun to take market share"[34] from Arianespace. Here's one: NASA saved at least $548 million, and perhaps more, thanks to just one contract with Elon Musk's SpaceX. Government launch costs are assumed to command a 50% premium to the $67M sticker price. This map of outer space by Pablo Carlos Budassi highlights more than 200 celestial objects in our universe and provides details and facts about each one. But the award SpaceX received for a single mission in the first year of Phase Two was $316 . [30], By December 2014, Arianespace had selected a design and commenced development of the Ariane 6, its new entrant into the commercial launch market aiming for more competitively priced launch service offerings, with operational flights planned to begin in 2020. Eutelsat CEO Michel de Rosen said, in reference to ESA's program to develop the Ariane 6, "Each year that passes will see SpaceX advance, gain market share and further reduce its costs through economies of scale. In this data repository, the per-kilogram launch cost provided in the interactive chart is typically the unit flyaway cost, a term borrowed from the aviation industry and defined in the Definitions subsection of this page. Others require a simple calculation: dividing the total cost of a dedicated launch by the vehicles payload capacity to LEO. ISRO vs. SpaceX launch vehicle price comparison: If you look at the price difference between ISRO and SpaceX launch vehicles, ISRO is the winner. PARIS Launch-service provider SpaceX's new price chart shows the performance cost incurred when making the Falcon 9 Full Thrust and Falcon Heavy rockets partially reusable. Below are the stats on how the two rockets compare. The big cheese at Roscosmos has claimed a launch to the International Space Station using good ol' fashioned Russian Soyuz rockets still costs less than SpaceX's offering. [97] Airbus CEO Fabrice Bregier stated: "What is the weakness of a big group like Airbus when we talk about innovation? [47], In early 2019, the French "Court of Audit criticized Arianespace for what it "perceived as an unsustainable and overly cautious response to the swift rise of SpaceXs affordable and reusable Falcon 9 rocket." In then-year dollars, per-kilogram costs increased from 1957 to 2005 and generally decreased from 2005 to 2020. For a suborbital trip on Virgin Galactics SpaceShipTwo and Blue Origins New Shepard, seats typically cost $250,000 to $500,000. [103], By May 2018, as SpaceX prepared to launch the first Block 5 version of Falcon 9, Eric Berger reported in Ars Technica that, during the eight years since its maiden launch, Falcon 9 had become the dominant rocket globally, through SpaceX efforts to take risks and relentlessly innovate driving efficiency upwards. [64][65] In 2019, Blue was not only competing to offer the New Glenn launch vehicle for the US military's multi-year block-buy contract for "all [US] national security launches from 2022 to 2026" against SpaceX, ULA (for which Blue is on contract to provide the BE-4 engines for the ULA Vulcan), and others, it had "said the Air Force competition was designed to unfairly benefit ULA. Payloads manufacturing is where good money can be made. ", "Bezos throws cash, engineers at rocket program as space race accelerates", "Blue Origin to offer dual launch with New Glenn after fifth mission", "Europe says SpaceX "dominating" launch, vows to develop Falcon 9-like rocket", "Concerned about SpaceX, France to accelerate reusable rocket plans", "Boeing Stacks Two Satellites to Launch as a Pair", "SpaceX Falcon 9 launches debut dual satellite mission", "Boeing Head: SpaceX Making Company a Better Competitor", "DFJ's Steve Jurvetson on why he invested in SpaceX, Planet Labs", United Launch Alliance faces increased competition on space launches, Airbus unveils 'Adeline' re-usable rocket concept, Small Satellite Launchers at NewSpace Index, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Space_launch_market_competition&oldid=1139120837, Pages with non-numeric formatnum arguments, Articles with dead external links from August 2019, Articles with permanently dead external links, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2017, Articles that may be too long from December 2019, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2015, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Articles containing potentially dated statements from May 2015, Wikipedia articles in need of updating from August 2015, All Wikipedia articles in need of updating, All articles with vague or ambiguous time, Vague or ambiguous time from October 2021, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2021, Wikipedia articles in need of updating from May 2016, Wikipedia articles in need of updating from August 2022, Articles containing potentially dated statements from September 2012, Wikipedia articles in need of updating from August 2019, Articles with failed verification from August 2018, Articles containing potentially dated statements from January 2018, Articles with unsourced statements from March 2019, Wikipedia articles in need of updating from December 2021, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. What is the biggest space . It's clear that ULA's rocket can't even compete with SpaceX's current rocket; it will fall far behind when Starship comes online. This data repository compares costs between space launch vehicles by incorporating many vehicle characteristics into a single figure: the cost to launch one kilogram of payload mass to low Earth orbit (LEO) as part of a dedicated launch. ULA responded to the Falcon 9 by beginning development in 2014 on the Vulcan rocket, a partly reusable vehicle powered by Blue Origin BE-4 engines, intended to replace its ageing expendable Atlas V and Delta IV rockets. SpaceX charges $62 million for a Falcon 9 rocket launch, . [54] By early 2018, ULA had moved the first launch date for the Vulcan launch vehicle to no earlier than mid-2020,[62] and by 2019, were aiming to launch in 2021. [81], Following the successful maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy in February 2018, and with SpaceX advertising a US$90 million list price for transporting up to 63,800kg (140,700lb) to low-Earth orbit, U.S. President Donald Trump said: "If the government did it, the same thing would have cost probably 40 or 50 times that amount of money. U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, The Annual Compendium of Commercial Space Transportation: 2018, January 2018, https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/media/2018_ast_compendium.pdf. "[37] However, in the market for launches of US military payloads, ULA faced no competition for nearly a decade, since the formation of the ULA joint venture from Lockheed Martin and Boeing in 2006. The company has stated they will support a regular launch cadence of up to eight launches per year. Citing inflation, SpaceX increased launch prices to $67M in Q1 2022. Often, the maximum payload capacity is calculated by assuming a relatively low-altitude circular orbit, such 185 km, and an inclination that corresponds to the latitude of one of the vehicles preferred spaceports. It can put 53 metric tons (117,000 lbs) in orbit compared to the Delta 4 Heavy's 23 metric tons (or 50,600 lbs), a 230% improvement. Pricing also differs depending on required orbit. New capacity from Chinese Long March and Indian PSLV medium-lift vehicles and a number of new small launchers from Virgin Orbit, Rocket Lab, Firefly, and a number of new Chinese small launch vehicles are expected to put more downward pressure on prices, while also increasing the ability of entities launching smallsats to purchase custom launch dates and launch orbits, increasing overall responsiveness to launch purchasers. . [9], Non-military commercial satellites began to be launched in volume in the 1970s and 1980s. "[11], Little market competition emerged inside any national market before approximately the late 2000s. It is a little bit of trial and error. The management layoffs were the "beginning of a major reorganization and redesign" as ULA endeavors to "slash costs and hunt out new customers to ensure continued growth despite the rise of [SpaceX]". Given Electron's unprecedentedly low launch cost ($4.5-6 million), we can expect that the Rocket Lab Neutron will significantly outperform Falcon 9 and SpaceX Heavy with their launch costs of $60 and $90 million, respectively. In addition to price reductions for proffered launch service contracts, launch service providers are restructuring to meet increased competitive pressures within the industry. This does not include "the more aspirational possibilities presented by space tourism or mining, nor by [NASA] megaprojects."[59]. [113] Boeing CEO James McNerney has indicated that SpaceX's growing presence in the space industry is forcing Boeing "to be more competitive in some segments of the market. In many cases, space launches are arranged through private or classified contracts.1 In other cases, launch providers may provide costs for a single configuration of a launch vehicle, despite offering a wide range of variants of the vehicle to potential customers with vastly different capabilities.2 Most critically, the very definition of launch cost is subject to interpretation. Nvidia RTX 3080 vs 3080-Ti: Full Comparison With Specs, Price, and More. The money for the space industry [had been] secure and did not encourage risk-taking in the development of new space technologies. At the same time, it only costs about $100 million per launch . [107][106]), In addition to building new launch vehicles and endeavoring to lower launch prices, competitive responses may include new product offerings, and now do include a more schedule-oriented launch cadence for dual-manifested payloads on offer from Blue Origin. [53] It was unclear how the change in development funding mechanisms might change ULA plans for pricing market-driven launch services. [71] In the event, SpaceX did not choose to develop the reusable second stage for the Falcon 9, but are doing so for their next-generation launch vehicle, the new fully reusable Starship. For example, the price of a launch of SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket has gone up from $62 million to $67 million and it now costs $97 million, rather than the previous $90 million, to book a . Smaller . In then-year dollars, per-kilogram costs increased from 1957 to 2005 and generally decreased from 2005 to 2020. driving down launch costs by . If the same space launch vehicle were to support a different mission to LEO, such as one that requires a higher altitude or inclination, the payload capacity would be reduced. Last year, most of SpaceX's Starlink launches have released satellites into Shell 4, at an inclination of 53.2 degrees, after the company largely completed launches into the first 53-degree . In this data repository, the number of successful orbital launches includes all launches before December 31, 2019. The corresponding . Consumption of Fuel and Materials per Capita, Visualizing Chinas Dominance in Battery Manufacturing (2022-2027P), Mapped: The Population of Indias States Compared with Countries. We assume a slightly lower average of $60M, due to expected price slippage from some launches flying at less than full capacity. However, if you go deeper . Over 16 missions, SpaceX saw an average cost overrun of . "[114], Early information in 2015 on the Starlink constellation of 4000 satellites operated by SpaceX intended to provide global Internet services, along with a new factory dedicated to manufacturing low-cost smallsat satellites, indicate that the satellite manufacturing industry may "experience a supply shock similar to what the launcher industry is experiencing" in the 2010s. Satellite design and manufacturing is beginning to take advantage of these lower-cost options for space launch services. For the new ESA launch vehicleAriane 6, aiming for flight in the 2020s400 million of development capital was requested to be "industry's share", ostensibly private capital. Many of the cited sources directly provide cost-per-kilogram estimates for launches to LEO.