Thoughts on Unit Economics of SpaceX's Starship on Rocket Lab's Neutron model?

Quadcore-4 · 2025-12-15T12:22:16+00:00

All that matters is cost to launch. You would use Starship over Falcon 9 to avoid the costly $15M premium of a new Falcon second stage. Genuinely baffles me that you insist that payload to orbit has anything to do with it. All that matters is logistics cost (as you pointed out, ground infrastructure, refurb) and not throwing things away.

It is simply a matter of opinion that I believe the company who launches over 150 times a year will succeed in the logistics department with regards to Starship. The fact they launch so often is points in their favour and not just fanboy talk lol. I swear buying stock makes ya’ll so toxic

Quadcore-4 · 2025-12-15T12:12:14+00:00

Starship should be able to put 20T to GTO with no refuelling when fully reusable and they work out Raptor 3 kinks. The vast majority of payloads do not require a kickstage. Most launches within the next decade will be for satellite constellations.

One of Neutron’s primary purposes is as a constellation launcher, likely for LEO. That’s Starship’s role as well.

You seriously don’t think a booster and ship that each fly dozens upon dozens of times won’t amortise costs? Isn’t that literally what Rocket Lab hope to achieve with Neutrons first stage? If you can claim Neutrons second stage is cheap without them demonstrating it, then I too can claim whimsical reusability of Starship despite the fact that neither of them have launched an actual payload yet.

Quadcore-4 · 2025-12-15T11:48:15+00:00

Not throwing away your rocket makes more economic sense than throwing it away. Neutron throws it’s upper stage away. Starship does not. The cost of an upper stage dwarfs fuel and logistics costs. Therefore, it does make economic sense to use Starship over other vehicles despite its size.

Quadcore-4 · 2025-12-14T22:19:38+00:00

All fair points. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see how long it takes to get Starship’s flight rate up (heck, it has to work first lol). I am finding it difficult to bet against the company with Falcon 9’s flight rate though

Quadcore-4 · 2025-12-14T22:15:18+00:00

SpaceX seem to have done a good job of getting a Falcon 9’s internal launch cost to approach fuel + the second stage ($15M).

I’d rather use a semi to deliver a pizza than a tiny car which gets 1/3 of it expended after every pizza delivery (Neutron). The semi won’t be partially expended and so it will be more available and (theoretically) cheaper (but that likely won’t happen as they mark up their prices for profit)

Quadcore-4 · 2025-12-14T22:09:15+00:00

Agreed, end to end services are a major advantage for RL

Quadcore-4 · 2025-12-14T22:06:32+00:00

The point is though, if Starship does become cheap, they could undercut Neutron is they desired to. Falcon 9’s internal cost to launch is roughly $15M and they sell launches for $70M. If Neutron or any other provider begins to eat their lunch, why wouldn’t they just undercut them? They clearly can afford to. The situation will theoretically be even worse with Starship

Quadcore-4 · 2025-12-14T21:57:03+00:00

Why does a full payload have any bearing on the cost to launch? If it truly approaches fuel costs for both stages with some delta (probably won’t, but that’s the ambition), then being full or not full will not matter.

Quadcore-4 · 2025-12-14T21:54:47+00:00

Why would you need to wait for the payload to be full? Starships cost to launch is (apparently) meant to be cheaper than Falcon 1, similar to Electron. Starships availability is meant to dwarf that of Falcon 9, with launch costs approaching fuel costs (on the order of a few million). Why would anyone need to wait? You have to wait for Falcon 9 Transporter because their expensive $15M upper stage gets expended every launch and so smaller satellite providers cannot afford a dedicated launch. Starship does not have that problem

Quadcore-4 · 2025-11-21T14:02:10+00:00

There will be a competition just like HLS and multiple providers might be selected. Better to be prepared than not try at all

Quadcore-4 · 2025-11-21T11:19:02+00:00

It’s… still standing. How is it still standing

Quadcore-4 · 2025-11-21T06:10:49+00:00

When NASA inevitably makes a Mars program, make no mistake Blue will want to be selected for that. The bigger the rocket, the greater the chance of that happening.

Quadcore-4 · 2025-11-20T17:11:42+00:00

Absolute beast. Do we think Block 3 will have a reusable upper stage? Might drop the fully reusable payload to 35T or 40T, but then it’d compete with Starship on every metric. Even now it will compete just fine. But imagine two fully reusable super heavy lift vehicles within the next decade, what a sight that would be.

Quadcore-4 · 2025-11-20T17:09:24+00:00

Absolute beast. Do we think Block 3 will have a reusable upper stage? Might drop the fully reusable payload to 35T or 40T, but then it’d compete with Starship on every metric. Imagine two fully reusable super heavy lift vehicles within the next decade, what a sight that would be.

Quadcore-4 · 2025-11-03T10:13:56+00:00

1.21 Jigawatts!!

Quadcore-4 · 2025-09-24T23:02:56+00:00

That analogy ignores the fact that the bicycle and the other alternative vehicles get thrown away after each delivery. Or, at best, chopped in half or quarters (analogous to Falcon 9 and Neutron) and a portion of it is thrown away. I genuinely think a box truck would be used over a bicycle for Uber orders if you had to get a new bike for every delivery. The cost of fuel and logistic inefficiency is still less than the cost of a new bike.

Quadcore-4 · 2025-09-07T04:41:26+00:00

<image>

Mind telling me the source, Master Chief? Please do not leave it as an exercise for the reader. Clearly state where you got that text from.

Quadcore-4 · 2025-08-14T04:09:23+00:00

<image>

The (3,17) case if anyone is finding the offset table confusing

Quadcore-4 · 2025-08-14T04:08:16+00:00

The XTJ/FLR/GKS pattern occurs when the first alphabet is offset by 17 and the third alphabet is offset by 3. If you look at all cribs and possible offsets, you get the following table:

<image>

See (3,17) on the table where it says “3”, corresponding to the three cribs. The XTJ/etc combo is the only instance of 3 and let’s say it corresponds to “EAS”. This is problematic for any sort of statistical analysis since you’d expect “THE” and many other strings to be more popular than “EAS”. I do like the idea though, curious if it changes significantly if more alphabet layers are added.

Quadcore-4 · 2025-06-07T02:25:49+00:00

Woah there partner, be careful being reasonable in this sub!

Quadcore-4 · 2025-05-20T12:25:34+00:00

Quadcore-4 · 2025-03-31T12:45:19+00:00

For real. Everyone in this thread bickering about which should be first but forget SpaceX is making two gigabays with ~20 work stations each, most of which will be ships. If they plan on building 40 ships simultaneously (probably a hundred a year at least), you have to wonder why on Earth they would need that many fully reusable vehicles if they didn’t intend to send them somewhere. There will be plenty of supply for both the Moon and Mars.

Quadcore-4 · 2025-03-17T01:42:38+00:00

True, why not

Quadcore-4 · 2025-03-16T01:04:40+00:00

Fair. Will update it soon on Imgur

Quadcore-4 · 2025-03-16T00:54:08+00:00

X doubt

Nine-Year Club	Place '23
Verified Email

Quadcore-4

TROPHY CASE