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from https://spacedaily.com/t-launch-cost-shuttle-reusable-rockets-starship-below-100-per-kg/

Sending a kilogram to orbit cost roughly $55,000 in the Space Shuttle
era. Reusable rockets have brought the theoretical cost down to a few
thousand dollars today. If Starship eventually achieves rapid full reusability, some projections put the figure below $100/kg rCo potentially turning access to orbit from an extraordinary expense into something approaching ordinary transportation.
Launch cost has fallen dramatically, but Shuttle, Falcon and Starship
figures measure different things. The sub-$100/kg case still depends on
full reuse, cadence and full payloads.

By Lachlan Brown

Published August 18, 2026 -+ How we edit

Sending a kilogram to orbit cost roughly $55,000 in the Space Shuttle
era. Reusable rockets have brought the theoretical cost down to a few
thousand dollars today. If Starship eventually achieves rapid full reusability, some projections put the figure below $100/kg rCo potentially turning access to orbit from an extraordinary expense into something approaching ordinary transportation.
A SpaceX reusable-rocket test vehicle descends under engine power during
an early flight test. Photo by SpaceX via Pexels. Representative
historical image; this is not an operational Falcon 9 or Starship mission. Ilove a clean chart as much as anyone, and the history of launch cost
seems to offer a beauty: about $55,000 to place a kilogram in low Earth
orbit with the Space Shuttle, a few thousand dollars with modern
commercial rockets, then perhaps less than $100 if Starship becomes
rapidly and fully reusable.

The direction is real. The neatness is not.

Those three numbers come from different kinds of calculation. One is a
fully burdened programme cost divided by maximum payload. Another
combines an advertised launch price with a rocketrCOs theoretical
capacity. The last is a projection resting on a vehicle and operating
tempo that do not yet exist.

I do not say that to drain the excitement from the story. Reusability
has already changed the economics of leaving Earth. I say it because the honest version is more useful: launch is becoming dramatically cheaper,
while rCLcost per kilogramrCY remains a slippery unit that can conceal
almost as much as it reveals.

The ShuttlerCOs $55,000 was not a ticket price
The familiar number comes from a NASA Ames analysis of falling launch
costs. It assigned the Shuttle a cost of about $1.5 billion per launch
and a maximum low-Earth-orbit payload of 27,500 kilograms. Divide the
first figure by the second and you get $54,500 per kilogram, usually
rounded to $55,000.

That is a legitimate benchmark, but it is not what every customer was
invoiced for every kilogram. Shuttle missions carried people,
life-support equipment, an orbiter that returned to Earth and hardware tailored to the job. The useful payload also changed with the
destination. In the same paper, NASA calculated a cost of $93,400 per
kilogram for cargo delivered to the International Space Station because
the Shuttle could carry only 16,050 kilograms there.

This is the first rule of launch-cost comparisons: orbit is not one destination, and maximum capacity is not the same as typical delivered
mass. The $55,000 figure tells us the scale of Shuttle economics. It
does not reconstruct a universal Shuttle fare.

Falcon 9 changed what gets thrown away
NASA applied similar arithmetic to Falcon 9. It took SpaceXrCOs then-advertised price of $62 million and divided it by a maximum LEO
payload of 22,800 kilograms, producing $2,720 per kilogram. On paper,
that was about one twentieth of the Shuttle benchmark.

SpaceX still lists 22,800 kilograms as Falcon 9rCOs maximum payload to
LEO. There is a revealing wrinkle, though: the companyrCOs 2026 prospectus describes that capacity as the fully expendable figure. A mission that
lands the booster reserves propellant for the return, reducing the
performance available to the payload. The famous $2,720 calculation is therefore a useful theoretical benchmark, not a measurement of a
particular reused Falcon 9 mission.

The achievement underneath it is nevertheless substantial. Falcon 9
proved that an orbital-class first stage could fly back, land and be
used repeatedly. SpaceX said in its 2026 prospectus that a booster had
flown 34 times by the end of March. Engines, tanks, avionics and
structure that once would have been discarded were having their
production cost spread across dozens of missions.

Astronauts returning from six-month ISS missions come home measurably
taller because the spinerCOs intervertebral discs are thought to expand without gravity compressing them, a stretch of up to two inches that
reverses within days of a child-sized hug back on Earth
The Artful Age

Apollo 14 carried roughly 500 tree seeds around the Moon in 1971, they
were germinated and planted in schoolyards and state capitols across
America, and then nobody kept a proper list rCo until a NASA scientist
started hunting the survivors and has now tracked down dozens still growing.

Some of the most promising places to search for alien life arenrCOt
planets at all, but moons rCo because Europa and Enceladus keep oceans
liquid beneath their ice partly through the gravitational squeezing of
giant planets, an internal heat source that doesnrCOt care how far they
are from the Sun.

That is the economic heart of reuse. Rocket propellant is comparatively
cheap. Rocket hardware, the industrial system that builds it and the
people who prepare it are not.

A kilogram does not have one market price
A small satellite operator cannot buy one kilogram at the full-rocket
bulk rate. The payload needs an adapter, testing and integration. It
needs the correct orbit and a place on a real launch schedule. Empty
capacity on the wrong trajectory is not useful capacity.

SpaceXrCOs current small-satellite rideshare offer starts at $350,000 for
50 kilograms to sun-synchronous orbit, with additional mass priced at
$7,000 per kilogram. The starter package itself works out to $7,000 per kilogram, well above the familiar $2,720 Falcon benchmark and still far
below Shuttle-era scale.

A useful reality check arrived in 2026 from researchers Alessio Terzi
and Francesco Nicoli. Their PNAS Nexus study standardised data from more
than 4,400 launches between 1960 and 2025. It estimated that the average
cost of sending a kilogram to orbit fell from $87,023 in 1960 to $3,868
in 2025. Their central model projected about $1,600 by 2030 and $300 by
2040.

That broad dataset is a better portrait of the market than one rocketrCOs ideal ratio. It also reminds us that price and internal cost are
different. A launch company may save money by reusing a booster without passing every dollar to customers. Demand, available slots, contracts
and competition still shape the price.

On 13 April 2029, a roughly 375-metre asteroid named Apophis will pass
closer to Earth than some of our own satellites rCo just 32,000 kilometres above the surface rCo and new calculations suggest up to 90% of humanity
could potentially see it cross the sky with the naked eye.

A rocky planet called TOI-561 b completes an entire year in under 11
hours and orbits so close to its star that its surface is thought to
contain a vast magma ocean. Its star is roughly 10 billion years old rCo
twice the age of the Sun rCo yet after billions of years of extreme
radiation, James Webb found compelling evidence that the planet still
has a thick atmosphere.

Below $100 is a scenario, not a present quote
SpaceX says Starship is designed to carry more than 100 tonnes to orbit
in a fully reusable configuration. The arithmetic is easy. A $10 million flight carrying 100 tonnes gives $100 per kilogram. A $2 million flight
gives $20.

The latter figure traces to a 2019 projection, reported by TechCrunch,
in which Elon Musk put eventual Starship operating cost at roughly $2
million per launch, including about $900,000 for propellant. That was an aspiration made years before the present vehicle, not an audited cost or
a public customer price.

SpaceXrCOs own 2026 prospectus makes a more restrained claim. The company
says it aims to reduce the cost of reaching orbit by 99 per cent or more relative to a historical benchmark of $18,500 per kilogram. A 99 per
cent reduction is $185 per kilogram. rCLOr morerCY leaves room for double digits, but does not promise them.

Every optimistic Starship estimate rests on the same stack of
conditions. Both stages must return and refly with limited inspection
and refurbishment. Launches must occur often enough to spread pad,
factory, workforce and development costs across a large number of
flights. Customers must provide enough payload to use that enormous
capacity. A half-empty rocket doubles the cost per delivered kilogram
before anything else changes.

Reuse changes economics, not orbital physics
When I wrote about why reaching orbit is mostly about moving sideways at roughly 28,000 kilometres per hour, what stayed with me was the
stubbornness of the physics. Reusability does not reduce the speed a spacecraft needs. It changes how much expensive machinery we discard
while reaching it.

This is where the airline analogy helps, then breaks. An airliner would
be absurdly costly if its engines and airframe were scrapped after every journey. A rocket designed to fly again should gain the same basic
economic advantage. But a rocket also carries its oxidiser, operates
near extreme structural margins and returns through punishing heat. The inspection burden, heat-shield life and turnaround time matter as much
as whether the vehicle lands.

I made a similar point when examining StarshiprCOs still-unproven
ship-to-ship refuelling system. The programme has demonstrated difficult pieces of its architecture. It has not yet demonstrated rapid full-stack reuse. We should be able to admire real progress without quietly
treating the remaining milestones as completed.

Cheap launch changes design before it makes space ordinary
If launch eventually falls below $100 per kilogram, the first
transformation may be in engineering culture. Spacecraft teams spend
years shaving mass because every kilogram carries such a large transport penalty. A much cheaper ride allows thicker shielding, larger propellant margins, more standard components and spare hardware. Stations, depots
and large telescopes become easier to assemble when lifting beams, tanks
and tools is no longer the dominant expense.

That still does not make a working satellite ordinary freight. Design, testing, integration, insurance and operations remain. Human travel adds
life support, abort capability and stringent safety requirements. The
launch price of a personrCOs body mass tells us almost nothing about the
cost of carrying that person safely.

Higher cadence also carries obligations. In an earlier piece on orbital
debris creating more orbital debris, I argued that cheaper access and responsible stewardship have to grow together. Launching more hardware
can enable extraordinary science and infrastructure. It can also
increase congestion unless tracking, disposal and traffic coordination
keep pace.

So I would keep the dramatic falling curve, but label it honestly.
ShuttlerCOs $55,000 and todayrCOs few-thousand-dollar range are useful
markers of a genuine transformation. Starship below $100 is a plausible projection only if full reuse, rapid turnaround, high cadence and heavy utilisation all arrive together.

That is not ordinary transportation yet. It is the engineering
proposition that might one day make orbit feel less extraordinary.


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Written by

Lachlan Brown
Lachlan Brown is a co-founder of Brown Brothers Media and one of Space
Daily's two publishers. He is the author of several books on Buddhism, mindfulness, and relationships, and oversees content operations and
publishing strategy across the network. At Space Daily, Lachlan focuses
on the Mind & Meaning pillar rCo the psychology of ambition, isolation,
and meaning under extremes.

More from this author raA

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