> What Thursday's revelatory reentry footage promises is a world in which launch is cheap and abundant. No longer will we need to worry so much about mass or volume, which have been tyrannical overlords to mission planners since the inception of spaceflight nearly seven decades ago.<p>Using the metrics in the article, Starship costs come out to around $300 per kilogram launched.<p>This is an order of magnitude drop over existing launch costs, which are already lower than ever courtesy of the Falcon rockets.<p>(Wikipedia estimates Falcon costs are $3,000 per kg. Other providers still significantly higher.)<p>Any time you change such a fundamental pricing unit in a market, there is going to a huge amount of change in market opportunities.<p>People dismissing this have their heads in the sand.
I used to be a Space X skeptic, pooh-poohing them for re-using RP-1 based rocket engine technology from the 1960s. Clearly, I’m a moron. Starting with known technology and scaling from there worked. Amazing.
They'd already done revolutions with this launch: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXiB-Kgqvdk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXiB-Kgqvdk</a><p>The latest one was more successful than the previous tests partly due to not revolving.
What impact will this have on the design of future orbital vehicles? I can't imagine everyone needing to launch hundreds of tons into orbit, much in the way that people don't buy a lorry if they just want to pick up their kid from school.
recommend to watch Thunderf00t's live coverage <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfkadv8NHlw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfkadv8NHlw</a>