SpaceX's Starship fourth launch was a resounding success. Both the booster and the ship came down for soft landings, even though one of the ship's fins was nearly burnt off by the heat of re-entry. But compared with the first and second launches, when the Starship/booster combo exploded, and the third launch, when the Starship disintegrated during re-entry, these were huge successes. Remember, SpaceX learns by iteration. It tries something, then fixes any errors, then tries again, fixes new problems, tries again, and so on in a continuous program of improvement. And the logic of the progress so far is that flight five (late July?) will be still more successful. And flight six after that, and flight seven .....
By the end of this year, Starship will probably be carrying cargo to and from space. And when it is, it will cut the cost of launching 1 kilo to orbit to around $20. Musk says that each launch will cost $2 million, and each Starship can lift 100 tonnes into orbit. Even if you allow for fat profit margins, making that, say $50/kg, it still means that a human weighing 100 kg could go to LEO (low earth orbit) for $5,000. Though Musk says there will have to be thousands of accident-free launches before Starship will be considered safe.
That's just V-1 of Starship. V-3, which will go into construction in a few months, will be even more efficient. Its propellant load will increase 20%, but it will double its payload to 200 tonnes. Cost per kg to orbit will fall to $12/kg.
The chart below, from Our World in Data, shows the cost of launching 1 kg to orbit since 1961, each observation adjusted for inflation since then. SpaceX's first rocket, Falcon 1, cost $12,600/kg. It was not re-usable. The Falcon 9, which had a re-usable booster, but not second stage, cost $2,600/kg, half the cost of its nearest non-reusable competitor. Falcon Heavy, three Falcon 9 boosters yoked together, cut the cost to $1500/kg. And Starship V-3 will cut the cost to $20/kg. Its data point will be right off the bottom of the chart.
It's impossible to know for sure how this will change the world. But as Tony Seba says, a ten-times cost reduction leads to disruption and opportunity. Since SpaceX started, it will have engineered a 250 times cost reduction for lifting one kilogram to LEO.
This opens up the inner solar system to exploration. The Moon and Mars will be in reach, affordably. The cost of sending a single Starship to Mars will be $20 million in fuel (it will need 7 propellant ship launches to refuel it in space, each one carrying 200 tonnes of propellant). Tripling that for food, life systems, etc., gives us a cost per ship of $60 million. Even if we send 20 ships on the first expedition to Mars, with 10 astronauts per ship, with the rest of the payload devoted to food, shelters, water and air purification plants, rovers, and other things needed for survival on Mars, the total cost would be $1.2 billion. That's less than half SpaceX's 2023 profit. SpaceX could fund the first Mars mission with its own money, if it wanted to.
When asked to provide a costing for getting to Mars 20 years ago, in pre-SpaceX days, NASA estimated $100 billion (yes, with a b) for 5 astronauts, in then-money. Things have come a long way since then.
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