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Comment by cameldrv | Hacker News Reader

Can someone comment on the economics of this? Rocket Lab is charging $5m for 150kg to SSO. SpaceX offers 150kg to SSO on the smallsat rideshare for $1m. What sorts of payloads would not be suitable for rideshare or would be worth 5x the cost for better scheduling or a better orbit?

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It is never simple cost per kg calculation .

Ridshare orbit depends on the primary orbit requirements, if the orbit is not favourable to your sat, correcting the orbit may not be feasible at all, given the small payload size you may not have the fuel for the correction burn

Also fitting your sat to a rideshare payload adapter could be lot more complex depending on the primary and other shares

Similarly while spaceX is cheap, there are plenty of workloads where ULA is the only option, vertical assembly , certain fairing sized , some orbits etc .

- Type of orbit you want, SpaceX rideshare is like a bus trip, it will not get you exactly to your homes door. Rocket lab in this case is like a taxi.

- Timing, perhaps you want to deliver sooner.

There are a few companies such as Spaceflight[1] that partner with launch providers such as ISRO[2][3] to offer rideshare and dedicated launches at much cheaper prices.

[1] https://spaceflight.com/pricing/

[2] https://www.isro.gov.in/launchers

[3] https://www.nsilindia.co.in/launch-services

They are cheaper only for nano satellites. From your first link it costs 295k$ for 10kg to LEO. With spaceX you can send up to 200 kg to LEO for 1M$. It’s 20 times the payload for ~3 times the price.

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