---
type: claim
domain: space-development
description: "Projected $/kg ranges from $600 expendable to $13-20 at airline-like reuse rates, with analyst consensus at $30-100/kg by 2030-2035 — the central variable in all space economy projections, entirely determined by how many times each vehicle flies"
confidence: likely
source: "Astra synthesis from SpaceX Starship specifications, Falcon 9 reuse cadence trajectory (31→61→96→134→167 launches 2021-2025), Citi space economy analysis, propellant and ground ops cost estimates"
created: 2026-03-08
challenged_by: "No commercial Starship payload has flown yet as of early 2026. The cadence projections extrapolate from Falcon 9's trajectory, but Starship is a fundamentally different and more complex vehicle. Achieving airline-like turnaround requires solving upper-stage reuse, which no vehicle has demonstrated. The optimistic end ($10-20/kg) may require operational perfection that no complex system achieves."
---

# Starship economics depend on cadence and reuse rate not vehicle cost because a 90M vehicle flown 100 times beats a 50M expendable by 17x

Starship's build cost is approximately $90 million per stack (Super Heavy booster plus Starship upper stage), with marginal propellant cost of $1-2 million per launch (liquid methane and liquid oxygen are commodity chemicals) and ground operations estimated at $3-5 million at maturity. The economic model is entirely determined by reuse rate:

- **1 flight (expendable):** ~$600/kg
- **10 flights:** ~$80/kg
- **100+ flights (airline-like):** ~$13-20/kg

This directly builds on [[reusability without rapid turnaround and minimal refurbishment does not reduce launch costs as the Space Shuttle proved over 30 years]] — the Shuttle lesson was that reusability is necessary but not sufficient. The sufficient condition is cadence. Starship's design explicitly addresses the Shuttle's failure mode: stainless steel construction for thermal resilience, hot-staging for rapid booster recovery, and the Mechazilla chopstick catch system for minimal ground handling.

As of early 2026, Starship has completed 11 full-scale test flights, demonstrated controlled ocean splashdowns, and achieved mid-air booster capture. No commercial payload flights yet, but Starlink deployment missions are expected in 2026. The Falcon 9 cadence trajectory — 31 launches in 2021, 61 in 2022, 96 in 2023, 134 in 2024, 167 in 2025 — provides a leading indicator of what Starship operations could become.

Most analysts converge on $30-100/kg by 2030-2035 as the central expectation. Citi's bull case is $30/kg by 2040, bear case $300/kg. Even the pessimistic scenario (limited to 5-10 flights per vehicle) yields $200-500/kg — still 5-10x cheaper than current Falcon 9 pricing. Nearly all economic projections for the space industry through 2040 are implicitly bets on where Starship lands within this range.


### Additional Evidence (extend)
*Source: [[2026-03-18-starship-flight12-v3-april-2026]] | Added: 2026-03-18*

V3's 100+ tonne payload capacity changes the denominator in the $/kg calculation independent of reuse rate. A V3 vehicle carrying 100t has fundamentally different economics than a V2 vehicle carrying 35t even at identical reflight rates, because the payload mass increase is achieved through engine performance (Raptor 3 at 280t thrust vs Raptor 2) rather than additional vehicle cost. This means the payload scaling benefit compounds with reuse rate benefits rather than trading off against them.

---

Relevant Notes:
- [[reusability without rapid turnaround and minimal refurbishment does not reduce launch costs as the Space Shuttle proved over 30 years]] — Starship's design explicitly addresses every Shuttle failure mode
- [[launch cost reduction is the keystone variable that unlocks every downstream space industry at specific price thresholds]] — Starship's cost curve determines which downstream industries become viable and when
- [[Starship achieving routine operations at sub-100 dollars per kg is the single largest enabling condition for the entire space industrial economy]] — this claim quantifies the range of outcomes that determine whether the enabling condition is met
- [[SpaceX vertical integration across launch broadband and manufacturing creates compounding cost advantages that no competitor can replicate piecemeal]] — the flywheel drives the cadence that drives the cost reduction
- [[the space launch cost trajectory is a phase transition not a gradual decline analogous to sail-to-steam in maritime transport]] — Starship's cost curve is the specific mechanism of the phase transition

Topics:
- [[_map]]
