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Elon Musk said his space company’s enormous rocket should soon be able to reach orbits at a fraction of traditional launch costs.
Starship should be able to reach orbits for less than $10 million within two to three years, Musk said during a presentation Thursday at SpaceX’s southern Texas facility, where the company plans to launch the spacecraft.
For SpaceX’s smaller launch vehicle, Falcon 9, the company typically has charged private customers $60 million to $65 million for a launch, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
SpaceX has previously said that the company would use Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket it has built to date, for its most ambitious missions, including a potential trip to Mars. The vehicle is meant to be fully and rapidly reusable and forms an important part of the company’s business, according to analysts, as it could potentially deliver hundreds of satellites to orbit at once, including those that make up SpaceX’s own growing fleet of broadband satellites.
“We need to accomplish that—that’s not done yet,” Musk said of proving Starship can achieve the reusability goals. “But success is one of the possible outcomes.”
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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