"SpaceX's focus on reusable technology has slashed costs – the company says it can get an astronaut to the space station for $20m, versus $70m charged by Russia for a seat on a Soyuz rocket.
SpaceX is testing reusable prototype rockets that can return to Earth intact, rather than burn up in the atmosphere.
If successful, rockets could be reused like aeroplanes, cutting the price of a space mission to just $200,000, for fuel."
I wonder what the Russian's cut is. Since they are the only people that can send astronauts to space right now, they can charge basically any price they want.
They used to have a huge markup some 15 years ago. No longer. It's hard to determine price of a crewed Soyuz mission, but an unmanned Proton rocket, when ordered to launch Russian military satellites (which obviously can't bear much markup because it is the parts of the same system buying from each other, large markup only means increasing taxes) is 1.5x the price of a Falcon 9 launch, with a low orbit payload about 1.5x Falcon's and GEO orbit payload about 1.1x Falcon's. So any and all price advantage Russian rockets used to have over American is now eroded due to increased salaries (an aerospace engineer got about $500-$1000 a year 15 years ago and about $10K a year now) and lower SpaceX prices.
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"SpaceX's focus on reusable technology has slashed costs – the company says it can get an astronaut to the space station for $20m, versus $70m charged by Russia for a seat on a Soyuz rocket. SpaceX is testing reusable prototype rockets that can return to Earth intact, rather than burn up in the atmosphere. If successful, rockets could be reused like aeroplanes, cutting the price of a space mission to just $200,000, for fuel."
This is amazing.
I wonder what the Russian's cut is. Since they are the only people that can send astronauts to space right now, they can charge basically any price they want.
They used to have a huge markup some 15 years ago. No longer. It's hard to determine price of a crewed Soyuz mission, but an unmanned Proton rocket, when ordered to launch Russian military satellites (which obviously can't bear much markup because it is the parts of the same system buying from each other, large markup only means increasing taxes) is 1.5x the price of a Falcon 9 launch, with a low orbit payload about 1.5x Falcon's and GEO orbit payload about 1.1x Falcon's. So any and all price advantage Russian rockets used to have over American is now eroded due to increased salaries (an aerospace engineer got about $500-$1000 a year 15 years ago and about $10K a year now) and lower SpaceX prices.