The Cost of Space Flight Before and After SpaceX

see the graphics and chart at:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-cost-of-space-flight/

SPACE
The Cost of Space Flight Before and After SpaceX
Published 2 days ago on January 27, 2022
By Bruno Venditti

The Cost of Space Flight Before and After SpaceX

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The Cost of Space Flight Before and After SpaceX
On December 21, 2021, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched a cargo capsule 
to deliver supplies and Christmas gifts to astronauts in the 
International Space Station.

Just eight minutes after liftoff, the rocket’s first stage returned to 
Earth, landing on one of SpaceX’s drone ships in the Atlantic Ocean. 
This marked the company’s 100th successful landing.

Like other companies such as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Ball 
Aerospace, SpaceX is designing and building innovative spacecraft that 
are speeding up space delivery by making it more routine and affordable. 
But how much does it cost to launch a cargo rocket into space, and how 
has this cost changed over the years?

In the graphic above we take a look at the cost per kilogram for space 
launches across the globe since 1960, based on data from the Center for 
Strategic and International Studies.

The Space Race
The 20th-century was marked by competition between two Cold War 
adversaries, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States, to achieve 
superior spaceflight capability.

The space race led to great technological advances, but these 
innovations came at a high cost. For instance, during the 1960s NASA 
spent $28 billion to land astronauts on the moon, a cost today equating 
to about $288 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars.

In the last two decades, space startup companies have demonstrated they 
can compete against heavyweight aerospace contractors as Boeing and 
Lockheed Martin. Today, a SpaceX rocket launching can be 97% cheaper 
than a Russian Soyuz ride cost in the ’60s.

The Cost of Space Flight Before and After SpaceX

The key to increasing cost efficiency?

SpaceX rocket boosters usually return to Earth in good enough condition 
that they’re able to be refurbished, which saves money and helps the 
company undercut competitors’ prices.

Space Tourism
Although competition has brought prices down for cargo flights, human 
space transportation is still pricey.

During the last 60 years, roughly 600 people have flown into space, and 
the vast majority of them have been government astronauts.

For a suborbital trip on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and Blue 
Origin’s New Shepard, seats typically cost $250,000 to $500,000. Flights 
beyond that to actual orbit—a much higher altitude—are far more 
expensive, fetching more than $50 million per seat.

The Future of Space Flight
In a SpaceX press briefing, SpaceX Director Benji Reed said, “We want to 
make life multi-planetary, and that means putting millions of people in 
space.”

This may still seem like a stretch for most people. But, given the 
decreasing cost of space flights over the last two decades, perhaps the 
sky won’t be the limit in the near future.

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