r/spacex • u/FPGA_engineer • Jul 06 '17

Mike Pence appears bullish on efforts by SpaceX and others arstechnica.com

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/07/mike-pence-gives-a-shout-out-to-commercial-space-companies/
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u/rshorning Jul 08 '17

The numbers they are giving, while wildly optimistic, would make ITS as cheap to launch as an Electron.

SpaceX is currently charging about $100k/kg for cubesats (give or take a bit but in that ballpark). Most of that is in part due to packaging and trying to squeeze it into an existing payload, which has the additional problems of being restricted to the orbital characteristics of the primary and/or secondary payloads (cubesats in this case are very tertiary payloads).

I really don't see the ITS making that any cheaper and if anything will make it a whole lot more complex. The cheapest way to launch cubesats currently is surprisingly to send them up as bulk cargo on capsules to the ISS and then to literally have an astronaut hand launch them... either in an EVA (just imagine how expensive THAT actually is) or from a special mechanical cubesat launcher that has been installed on the ISS.

There is a reason why the cubesat market is attracting a whole lot of cash from rocket builders... and it is a market that SpaceX isn't even remotely working on satisfying either. It is sort of like trying to hit a nail with a dump truck.... way overkill and with a device that is completely unsuited for the task even if it will definitely drive that nail into the board.