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ben_wtoday at 7:16 AM0 repliesview on HN

The competition isn't other launch providers, it's not going to space at all.

According to Google, the price threshold to make space make more sensible than building on the ground is $200/kg: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.19468

Without full reusability, the estimated cost for Starship to LEO is kinda hard to find (necessarily, given the design isn't yet finalised), Wikipedia says $100m/launch in expendable mode, and the SpaceX website* says 250 metric tonnes in expendable mode, which is $100e6/250 metric tonnes = $400/kg.

* at least it does at time of writing: https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/starship