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Comment by mvpu | Hacker News Reader

I once heard Elon quote these: cost of a launch is roughly $60 million. Assuming the rocket can be reused 60 times it'll go down to about $1000 which is what he wants. IOW, he wants to make space travel ad cheap as international flight travel.

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Either you misinterpreted or he was being hyperbolic. There are lots of other costs involved in a launch that do not scale like the reusable first stage. A sub $10M launch cost is very optimistic and would be considered a stupendous success.

I heard the cost of fuel and other logistical things per flight is less than $300k but sorry guys can't find the video..

Fuel is ~$200k. "Logistical things" is much more.

Logistics is getting streamlined as well. Range safety used to take ~150 people per launch. The Falcon 9 is now responsible for its own range safety, and will terminate itself faster than a human would if it deviates from its ascent profile substantially. (This was developed by the Air Force in partnership with SpaceX)

http://www.patrick.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/10950...

> cost of a launch is roughly $60 million. Assuming the rocket can be reused 60 times it'll go down to about $1000

Don't you mean $1m?

Ah yes, he meant $1000 per person.

wow, a death row prisoner costs about $1m, now if they were offered freedom and a ride on a falcon 9..

but actually plenty of normal would want a potentially deadly ride into space wouldn't they.

Space Australia is best Australia

yeah a kind of space aussie :)

1000 people is 100 tons, is that a typical falcon 9 payload?

100 tons is 200,000 pounds, which is 4 times the maximum payload of the falcon 9, which is 50,300 (to low earth orbit). geostationary orbit is a little more than 10 times less at 18,300

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