Elon Musk believes there is a path for the SpaceX Super Heavy Starship (SHS) to be built for less than a Falcon 9. Currently, a single use SpaceX Falcon 9 can be purchased for about $62 million. The estimates for the cost of the SpaceX Super Heavy Starship (SHS) are about $250 to 400 million.
The current design of the SpaceX SHS has 38 Raptor engines. There are 31 Raptor engines in the Super Heavy booster and seven in the Starship upper stage. There are 9 Merlin engines in the SpaceX Falcon 9.
This will sound implausible, but I think there’s a path to build Starship / Super Heavy for less than Falcon 9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 11, 2019
Lowering the cost five to eight times will require simplification of the entire rocket and mass production and lower costs for the Raptor engines.
Elon Musk also indicates that the cost per kilogram to low earth orbit will be at least ten times cheaper with the SpaceX SHS versus the Falcon 9.
Elon can also be looking down the road as his plans call for building about a thousand SpaceX SHS. This would require making rocket engine factories that have one hundred times the capacity of the current rocket engine factory. Currently SpaceX can make about 400 Merlin engines every year. Eventually, SpaceX would need to make 30,000 Raptor engines every year.
At least 10X cheaper
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 11, 2019
Starship & Super Heavy will press tanks autogenously even in version 1. Very important, as helium costs more than oxygen on Falcon, even though liquid oxygen is 2/3 vehicle mass & helium weighs basically nothing.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 13, 2019
Stainless steel is CHEAP! Welding it is easy!
Super Heavy & Starship will eventually use gaseous methane & oxygen to pressurize the tanks so no helium is needed. They'll use the same gasses for the maneuvering thrusters as well, so no nitrogen or hydrazine will be needed either.— Just A. Tinker (@John_Gardi) February 11, 2019
Will there still be these header tanks inside starship? pic.twitter.com/uqKA2p9APU
— Everyday Astronaut (@Erdayastronaut) February 13, 2019
SOURCES- SpaceX, Elon Musk, Twitter
Written By Brian Wang. www.nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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