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Comment by 0xdeadbeefbabe | Hacker News Reader

Why build it if the cost is 10K+ to deploy?

10 years ago the cheapest launch options were in the $1-10M, and that's if you could even find a secondary / ride-along deployment. most satellite launches then would simply purchase a whole rocket, on order of $100s of M.

While this isn't consumer pricing yet, the orders of magnitude cost decrease because of lower cost / smaller satellites have made this much more accessible, and it's only going to continue as launch costs come down.

There are starting to be some lower cost options. A recent Kickstarter promised a ~$250 price point for a Femtosat/Sprite size craft launched as a rideshare inside a 3U Cubesat: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ambasat/ambasat-1-an-ed... (not speaking to the likelihood of it actually launching, just that it is purportedly an option)

Why build it if the cost is 10K+ to deploy?

"Why build a computer if it costs $10K+ for a special room?"- 1960's naysayers.

...it's really not that expensive anymore. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/20009/cubesat-laun...

According to your link the price is more like $100k+

https://spaceflight.com/schedule-pricing/#pricing seemed like a great deal till I saw "Pricing in thousands (USD)"

You're not the primary audience for this (yet).

This orders of magnitude cheaper than it used to be and will enable a broad wealth of new startups and applications in LEO. It's nothing short of a revolution.

The point is that a launch cost of $100k is totally manageable by a startup, which is very different than a decade ago.

The point is that $100k > $10k, so stating that "it's really not that expensive anymore" is false.

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