this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2026
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So if we assume they manage to build a fully rapidly reusable rocket and launch infrastructure (the latter of which is incredibly questionable), the only marginal cost increase is just labor to conduct the launches and consumables.
And the physics says more like 17 launches, but at the end of the day, that’s just how much it costs to send 200 tons to the moon, AND bring the rocket back. They’re not jettisoning stages or leaving the rocket behind in the moon like Apollo.
The numbers are mind boggling, and short of nuclear rockets and space elevators, there is literally no way to do this short of many, many, many tiny launches, and it’s way less risky to have those tiny launches refill a tanker in LEO than to send 20 launches to the moon independently. Plus there would be no way to send large pre assembled components like nuclear reactors and construction/manufacturing equipment. Everything would have to be manufactured and assembled on the moon.
So I’m not sure what the marginal cost per launch is. I remember reading that the propellant between Starship and Supeheavy is something like $100M per launch, which would put 20 launches at around $2B and would make the re-usability not actually a cost saver vs. an expendable rocket. However, I just read the article below that says the launch cost is more like $3-$5M, so I may have been completely off base in my original assumption.
https://spaceorbitals.com/articles/starship-v3-cost-per-kg-2026/
neat. so let’s not do it until we can do it without funding a nazi, a capitalist, or a war criminal?