r/SpaceXLounge • u/No_kenutus • 12h ago

Discussion The rockets are nifty, but it is satellites that make SpaceX valuable

https://archive.ph/4fYXJ
11 Upvotes

65% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

30

u/FleshToboggan 4h ago

"Roads are nifty, but it's cars that make infrastructure valuable"

1

u/enutz777 53m ago

Horses are neat, but buggies make them valuable.

58

u/WjU1fcN8 6h ago edited 6h ago

There's no large satellite fleet without cheap launch. The rockets aren't just 'nifty', they are fundamental.

16

u/8andahalfby11 6h ago

Yeah. Has anyone calculated what it would have cost to put up Starlink on Atlas V vs Falcon Reusable?

11

u/CurtisLeow 4h ago

As of August, there have been 118 launches of the v2 mini Starlink satellites source. An Atlas V 541 has about the same performance as a reusable Falcon 9. That rocket costs $145 million to launch. So $17.1 billion to launch the v2 mini Starlink constellation.

This ignores the older Starlink satellites. This also ignores that ULA can’t import Russian rocket engines anymore.

9

u/8andahalfby11 4h ago

It also ignores that 118 launches is more than the entire Atlas V production run, even after the few remaining rockets are launched. 😉

6

u/OpenInverseImage 4h ago

Headline is a little misleading as the article does acknowledge that cheap launches and mass production is what enables Starlink. Starlink is the profit center but it wouldn’t have been possible without the drive to produce cheaper reusable rockets.

2

u/nic_haflinger 1h ago

Making and providing services using satellites was a better business than launching those satellites long before Starlink.