Space X Interplanetary Transport System

[NeilChapman]

But that won't stop 30-40 minute priority cargo travel around the world.

The problem is that even if BFR-Transport works as well as hoped, there'll still be no such thing as 30-minutes to the other side of the planet. I can see how there might be a market for such a thing... an organ transplant, or a massively injured person or some such. But think about it: You are in charge of a transplant of a squeedlyspooch from a donor in New York City to a recipient in Dubai. So, you carve it out of the donor and dump it into the cooler precisely at noon. Since the recipient is a bazillionaire, there is a helicopter on the roof. You get the cooler to the chopper at 12:05. The chopper takes off and heads to the offshore launch site, landing at 12:20. Since the recipient is a bazillionaire, you are able to bypass the pesky waiting in line nonsense and cut ahead of everybody. You get the squeedlyspooch loaded on board at 12:30. You're ready to go! Pity the scheduled launch time is 3:30. So, three hours later the time comes... and there's a sandstorm at the Dubai launch site. Launch is delayed until 6:30. You arrive half an hour after that, a full seven hours after putting the squeedlyspooch on board the rocket. Sadly, the shelf life of a squeedlyspooch is only four hours and it has gone bad, has crawled out of the cooler, eaten half the passengers and has arranged their skulls in a mind-bending non-Euclidian geometry that opened a doorway that allowed Nyarlathotep to extrude through. The crawling chaos has now reduced half of Dubai to ashes, half to an alien structure of cyclopian dimenson that defies the laws of physics. Prepare for the incoming lawsuits from the few survivors who haven;t been driven mad by the results of your too-slow squeedlyspooch transplant scheme.

An interesting dilemma. Fortunately, decontamination teams can be sent quickly to Dubai.

My thought had more to do with 30-40 min priority travel supporting same day (or 10-12 hour) delivery.

Cargo picked up w/in 3 hrs of Tokyo launch site on Monday by 1400 hrs.
Cargo arrives to sorting site and ready for transport by 1900 hrs.
Cargo arrives in New York before 0700 Monday morning.
Cargo delivered w/in 3 hrs of NYC launch site by 11am Monday morning.

The capability will generate creative uses.

 

[fredymac]

No, you made the assertions. You provided numbers. Where is your data supporting it? Go back and read what I actually wrote--I asked you to provide your data.

Look, if you don't have any actual data, if you're just making stuff up, then admit it. There's no shame in being honest.

Incorrect. I don't have to do anything. I can sit back and just watch events unfold.

You on the other hand, must act to force these companies to stop. You throw a smoke screen of obfuscation and will not respond to fundamental level questions on the basis for your antagonism. Why?

 

[dan_inbox]

Really, this kind of personal squabbling is no fun for onlookers.
Could you guys take it to PM, or to pistol at ten paces, or something?

 

[Orionblamblam]

The capability will generate creative uses.

Twenty years ago (yeeesh) I worked for Pioneer Rocketplane. For those who may not remember, it was a Shuttle orbiter-looking rocket & jet powered craft; it would lift off a runway under jet power, rendezvous with a tanker aircraft, receive a massive load of liquid oxygen, then fire up a rocket engine. The rocket engine would shoot the plane to high velocity and high altitude; once exoatmospheric it would open the cargo bay doors and eject an upper stage which would stuff a smallish payload into orbit.

This was during the early dot com boom, when lots of people were looking at lots of satellites; Bill Gates wanted *thousands* of small internet-broadcasting satellites, for instance. Lots of companies were therefore looking at lots of lower-cost ways to launch them.

But anything can be used for multiple things. The Rocketplane, it was found, could be used for long range, high speed travel. Nothing like the BFR... nowhere near as fast, nowhere near as far. But you could put several tons of payload in the bay and send it something like three or four thousand miles in under an hour. The question was... *what* payload? Several were suggested. Military payloads, of course, and passenger transports; high-speed FedEx-like package services. But the screwiest one was apparently one of the most potentially profitable: fish.

It seemed that the Japanese were bugnuts for fresh, *really* fresh, exotic sushi, fish typically harvested thousands of miles away, taking days to get back via boat or some hours via cargo plane. Pioneer Rocketplane had numbers suggesting that the high-end sushi market in Japan was ready to pay enough for just-caught freshness that rocketplane-provided fish was be a profitable and *steady* source of income.

 

[RyanC]

Not relevant. BFR is not going to have the flight rate of 747. The accident rate of a BFR is going to be magnitudes more than an airliner

Previous author pointed out that 1.8% of all 747s ever built (roughly) have been lost.

40% of all Space Shuttles ever built were lost.

A loss rate of 5% of all BFR ever built is going to be significantly more than a 747, but much, much safer than a Space Shuttle.

 

[Sherman Tank]

Trouble with that comparison is that there were nowhere near as many Shuttles built as 747s.

 

[RyanC]

Unsubstantiated, and neither common nor sense. There were existing destinations for air travelers to go to, that were served by other conveyances. There is nothing equivalent for space. A few rich may buy some joy rides just like the MIG-25 flights. There is no commerce to drive the need for the masses to go.

There's already an equivalent.

The Apollo landing sites. Admit it; you'd all pony up to go to Tranquility Base National Historic Park, play some moon golf, etc etc.

EDIT: Mars as a REGULAR tourist destination is going to be no-go for a long, long time; until you can get travel times down -- spend about a month or two going to and from mars, a month on mars; that's swingable for 'above normal' people as a once in a lifetime trip. Before that, it's too time consuming for anything but the super ultra rich.

Basically, People can afford a lot of things now -- it's just TIME is a commodity.

I can easily get lines of credit easily, but I can't easily just take off a couple months (or more) unless I quit my job. I can get a few weeks with saved up time off.

 

[TomcatViP]

Thank you Orion. Fascinating.
Do you know if any business plan was published for this high speed sushi project?

 

[Flyaway]

Here’s what Elon Musk revealed about the ITS and SpaceX’s Mars ambitions in his Reddit AMA

Details on design changes, Mars, and what’s to come between now and 2022

https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/15/16476884/elon-musk-reddit-ama-spacex-mars-interplanetary-transport-system-raptor-engines

 

[Orionblamblam]

Thank you Orion. Fascinating.
Do you know if any business plan was published for this high speed sushi project?

I know there was some sort of study, but it was done before I signed on. Part of the initial businessy part of the project.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Not relevant. BFR is not going to have the flight rate of 747. The accident rate of a BFR is going to be magnitudes more than an airliner

Previous author pointed out that 1.8% of all 747s ever built (roughly) have been lost.

40% of all Space Shuttles ever built were lost.

A loss rate of 5% of all BFR ever built is going to be significantly more than a 747, but much, much safer than a Space Shuttle.

*Perhaps* more relevant to the BFR than the 747 was the DC-3. It apparently had a loss rate of 9.8%.

http://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=102097

 

[Archibald]

The capability will generate creative uses.

Twenty years ago (yeeesh) I worked for Pioneer Rocketplane. For those who may not remember, it was a Shuttle orbiter-looking rocket & jet powered craft; it would lift off a runway under jet power, rendezvous with a tanker aircraft, receive a massive load of liquid oxygen, then fire up a rocket engine. The rocket engine would shoot the plane to high velocity and high altitude; once exoatmospheric it would open the cargo bay doors and eject an upper stage which would stuff a smallish payload into orbit.

This was during the early dot com boom, when lots of people were looking at lots of satellites; Bill Gates wanted *thousands* of small internet-broadcasting satellites, for instance. Lots of companies were therefore looking at lots of lower-cost ways to launch them.

But anything can be used for multiple things. The Rocketplane, it was found, could be used for long range, high speed travel. Nothing like the BFR... nowhere near as fast, nowhere near as far. But you could put several tons of payload in the bay and send it something like three or four thousand miles in under an hour. The question was... *what* payload? Several were suggested. Military payloads, of course, and passenger transports; high-speed FedEx-like package services. But the screwiest one was apparently one of the most potentially profitable: fish.

It seemed that the Japanese were bugnuts for fresh, *really* fresh, exotic sushi, fish typically harvested thousands of miles away, taking days to get back via boat or some hours via cargo plane. Pioneer Rocketplane had numbers suggesting that the high-end sushi market in Japan was ready to pay enough for just-caught freshness that rocketplane-provided fish was be a profitable and *steady* source of income.

This is great and weird at the same time. Sushi and suborbital point to point. How about that.

 

[Archibald]

40% of all Space Shuttles ever built were lost.

That comparison makes no sense. Space Shuttles were never build in airliner like numbers. This is a flawed logic.

Trouble with that comparison is that there were nowhere near as many Shuttles built as 747s.

I fully agree.

 

[blackstar]

You on the other hand, must act to force these companies to stop.

Huh?

I did not realize that was my responsibility.

Okay, time to fire up the Batmobile. Who's holding my cape?

 

[blackstar]

2014 Air travel deaths 990
2015 Air travel deaths 560

There is well over 1 million automobile related deaths per year. No one seems to be ending travel across continents by car.

But that's not at all how people in these industries calculate risk. Air travel deaths, for instance, aren't just counted as the number of people killed, but also relevant to the number of passenger-miles traveled. By any measure, air traffic safety (particularly in the United States, the biggest market) has increased dramatically. Simply speaking, the number of passenger-miles traveled has increased a lot, and the number of fatalities has decreased dramatically. (Note that it's actually more complicated than that, because most accidents happen on landing and takeoff, not during long transit times over the oceans. So some of the risk analyses focus more on accidents per landing/takeoff. But to first order, everybody pays attention to fatalities per passenger-mile.) Air travel is now extremely safe, and passengers seem to like that.

Now extracting this out, one of the takeaways is that if you have a very safe form of travel, it's going to be extremely hard for somebody to come along and say "I have a way of decreasing the travel time for some flights, but it's going to kill a lot more people." The regulating authorities won't go for it, and passengers probably wouldn't either once the risks are known ("Let's see... I could fly to London in six hours extremely safely, or do it in thirty minutes at 100 times the risk... what should I do?")

 

[Byeman]

No, you made the assertions. You provided numbers. Where is your data supporting it? Go back and read what I actually wrote--I asked you to provide your data.

Look, if you don't have any actual data, if you're just making stuff up, then admit it. There's no shame in being honest.

Incorrect. I don't have to do anything. I can sit back and just watch events unfold.

But you didn't. You went and made some statements unsupported by facts.

 

[Byeman]

No, you made the assertions. You provided numbers. Where is your data supporting it? Go back and read what I actually wrote--I asked you to provide your data.

Look, if you don't have any actual data, if you're just making stuff up, then admit it. There's no shame in being honest.

Incorrect. I don't have to do anything. I can sit back and just watch events unfold.

But you didn't. You went and made some statements and assumptions unsupported by facts.

 

[fredymac]

Not in response to Blackstar or Byeman because they are locked behind iron clad walls of ignorance.

To all else who may not have followed all the posts, I responded way back stating I was using basic economic assumptions starting on known costs for ULA and Spacex single use launch charges.

Those assumptions led to a cost estimate of $10 Million/launch given fully realized re-usability as amortized over 100 launches. I had included in this, non re-use of the upper stage which would form the major share of that cost.

Since then, Musk has introduced his BFR concept in which he has stated that passenger costs would be at airline level (way below what I am projecting) based on full reusability.

As Musk has stated, imagine what an airline ticket would cost if you threw away the airliner after each flight.

I agree. This is key. It is the mechanism of dividing the cost of hardware by the number of times it is used and drives down the cost faster and more decisively than anything else.

Blackstar and Byeman are in denial of observable real world economics yet refuse to make any technical argument supporting their claims. They attack the notion or reusability, they denigrate anyone who supports it, and they agitate against the idea of private entities pursuing development of significant technological advances. What positive contribution can be found in any of their posts to date?

 

[sferrin]

Not to put words in their mouths, but I think their biggest areas of contention are safety and public perception. To that I'd have to point out that people were perfectly willing to fly in airplanes in the very early years when much safer automobiles, trains, and ships were available.

 

[fredymac]

Not to put words in their mouths, but I think their biggest areas of contention are safety and public perception. To that I'd have to point out that people were perfectly willing to fly in airplanes in the very early years when much safer automobiles, trains, and ships were available.

I am afraid I did not have that impression. It seemed to me they are primarily attacking the economics and technical feasibility (as opposed to safety) of reusability per se. I'm not sure about public perception. Again, my impression but if anything, I thought they were angry about the enthusiasm in public response.

 

[blackstar]

They attack the notion or reusability, they denigrate anyone who supports it, and they agitate against the idea of private entities pursuing development of significant technological advances. What positive contribution can be found in any of their posts to date?

Huh? I did not "attack the notion of reusability" or any of those other things--I asked you to support your assertions with data, specifically your assertion about a big increase in space tourism suddenly occurring at a specific price point (you said $10 million). I asked if you had any data to support that or if you had just made up the number. And I'll admit that I had an ulterior motive for asking it: because I've been around the space biz for a few decades and I am aware of past studies that attempted to figure out the market for space tourism, and at what price point people would be willing to buy. I wanted to see if you're actually aware of those studies (and also their assumptions and flaws). Since you didn't cite them, I'm guessing that you don't know about them.

Look, some of this stuff is going to pan out, some of it won't. But you need to accept that just because you want it to happen doesn't mean that it will. I've seen a number of boom-and-bust cycles in the space field where things that I wanted to happen didn't happen. There were really big promises made in the latter 1990s, for instance. And who here has forgotten that back in 2004 (a mere 13 years ago) lots of people were predicting a booming suborbital space tourism market in less than five years? Belief does not equal reality.

 

[NeilChapman]

They attack the notion or reusability, they denigrate anyone who supports it, and they agitate against the idea of private entities pursuing development of significant technological advances. What positive contribution can be found in any of their posts to date?

Huh? I did not "attack the notion of reusability" or any of those other things--I asked you to support your assertions with data, specifically your assertion about a big increase in space tourism suddenly occurring at a specific price point (you said $10 million). I asked if you had any data to support that or if you had just made up the number. And I'll admit that I had an ulterior motive for asking it: because I've been around the space biz for a few decades and I am aware of past studies that attempted to figure out the market for space tourism, and at what price point people would be willing to buy. I wanted to see if you're actually aware of those studies (and also their assumptions and flaws). Since you didn't cite them, I'm guessing that you don't know about them.

Look, some of this stuff is going to pan out, some of it won't. But you need to accept that just because you want it to happen doesn't mean that it will. I've seen a number of boom-and-bust cycles in the space field where things that I wanted to happen didn't happen. There were really big promises made in the latter 1990s, for instance. And who here has forgotten that back in 2004 (a mere 13 years ago) lots of people were predicting a booming suborbital space tourism market in less than five years? Belief does not equal reality.

Perhaps the difference this time is that a private company may be able to subsidize their vision w/government and private contracts.

 

[blackstar]

Perhaps the difference this time is that a private company may be able to subsidize their vision w/government and private contracts.

Not much of a difference. If anything, it could be viewed as a limitation, meaning that if the government doesn't want it, it may not happen.

People on the internets think that "commercial space" is an idea that just got invented in the last decade. In fact, you can find variations on the idea of "commercialized space" going back at least to the mid-1970s. There was a proposal for a commercial TDRSS, for example, with NASA purchasing comms services. The Leasat satellites of the 1980s were a variation of the government buying a commercial communications service. The Industrial Space Facility of the late 1980s was another variation. And there were numerous privately-funded launch company efforts dating from the 1980s into the 1990s. In the late 1990s there was supposed to be a launch revolution with at least a dozen companies all trying to develop rockets to launch satellites. And of course there was the "commercial reusable suborbital spaceflight" craze that started in the 2000s. Some of these have been boom and bust cycles, with lots of R&D money spent with little to show for it.

Once you've seen these things happen multiple times (and understood what was going on), you learn to be wary of hype and of fantastic promises.

 

[Orionblamblam]

This is great and weird at the same time. Sushi and suborbital point to point. How about that.

Yeah, I thought they were kidding when this was first mentioned to me, but it kept coming up, especially in pitches to investors.

I thought an easier approach would be to catch the fish *live* and bring them back to Japan in aquariums on ships or cargo jets, but I kept my trap shut about that.

 

[fredymac]

Huh? I did not "attack the notion of reusability" or any of those other things--I asked you to support your assertions with data, specifically your assertion about a big increase in space tourism suddenly occurring at a specific price point (you said $10 million). I asked if you had any data to support that or if you had just made up the number. And I'll admit that I had an ulterior motive for asking it: because I've been around the space biz for a few decades and I am aware of past studies that attempted to figure out the market for space tourism, and at what price point people would be willing to buy. I wanted to see if you're actually aware of those studies (and also their assumptions and flaws). Since you didn't cite them, I'm guessing that you don't know about them.

Look, some of this stuff is going to pan out, some of it won't. But you need to accept that just because you want it to happen doesn't mean that it will. I've seen a number of boom-and-bust cycles in the space field where things that I wanted to happen didn't happen. There were really big promises made in the latter 1990s, for instance. And who here has forgotten that back in 2004 (a mere 13 years ago) lots of people were predicting a booming suborbital space tourism market in less than five years? Belief does not equal reality.

Let me see if this is correct.

I have been specifically addressing the impact of re-usability on launch costs on all my posts and you weren’t rejecting that? That is very odd. I had the distinct impression you did not accept the premise and did not accept in particular the $10Million cost/launch for a fully established reusable Falcon 9 (ie, 100 launch amortization model with stable, high volume production lines).

I was purposefully refusing to spend time sourcing numbers when everyone on this site ought to know them or be able to refute/corroborate them if they sincerely wanted verification (just Google Falcon 9 launch cost to get an idea). My projections are tame compared to a fully reusable BFR.

Since you now say you are mainly questioning the potential size of the tourist market I will list some points of information. Virgin Galactic says it is charging around $200K/passenger and thinks it can attract 5000/year when operations are up and running at full speed. It is a subset of the same market that would be interested in a full orbital experience that Robert Bigelow has in mind for his space hotels. Blue Origin pricing for New Shepard flights will probably be in the same ballpark. Bezos himself has talked of “millions of people” eventually making it into space.

There are 10-20 million households in the US alone with net worth well above what would be needed to comfortably afford a space vacation. Just 1% of this customer base is 100,000 people. In fact, year to year, there are 10-15 million people with $1Million or more annual income. Among the general population, surveys indicate 60-80% express interest in a space vacation if they could afford it and this percentage should be indicative of the these wealthy households as well. The “fad” effect of tourists actually experiencing a space vacation would certainly have a powerful stimulus. In short, the numbers are there to support a launch market that dwarfs the current government/communications business.

All this is happening without government involvement and upon private entities which will suffer considerable financial loss if they fail. That is why I applaud them for trying and am willing to post some words in their defense.

 

[carmelo]

BFR on the moon.
Seems a early 50s scifi movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=223&v=AwlWmaL4x7s

 

[TomS]

That link starts right at the end of the video. Try this for the whole thing:

https://youtu.be/AwlWmaL4x7s

 

[TomS]

Elon's schedule optimism at work again? He gave a brief Q&A at SXSW and said ITS was on track to make short flights in 2019. To me, that would imply they've started fabricating the test vehicle. (A lot of major media reports are saying he said the ship would b ready for trips to Mars in 2019. He didn't.)

 

[Archibald]

SXSW ? goddam uncomprehensible accronym...

 

[TomS]

SXSW ? goddam uncomprehensible accronym...

Used to be South By Southwest -- big tech/media/music festival in Austin, Texas.

 

[NeilChapman]

Elon's schedule optimism at work again? He gave a brief Q&A at SXSW and said ITS was on track to make short flights in 2019. To me, that would imply they've started fabricating the test vehicle. (A lot of major media reports are saying he said the ship would b ready for trips to Mars in 2019. He didn't.)

Yes, that's what I heard. They are building the BFR and he expects short (grasshopper?) flights in 2019. He also stated that flight costs for BFR would are expected to be $5-6million for reuse flights.

 

[Michel Van]

Here the Original Q&A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DahRypEoeM4

the missing Falcon Heavy launch video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0FZIwabctw

 

[Machdiamond]

Just to be clear, it is neither the ITS (they gave up on that acronym) nor the BFR that they are currently building. It is the BFS - Big F*ing Ship.

That is the part that goes on top of the booster, which together form the BFR.

The BFS will start doing hops, similarly to what Grasshopper did a few years ago (the rocket that took off and landed repeatedly in Texas to develop the Falcon 9 landing technique).

BFS will fly progressively higher and if they meet their empty weight target on the prototype, BFS should eventually be capable of Single Stage to Orbit with little or no payload on board.

The complete BFR flights are still a few years down the road.

 

[Archibald]

What you say makes tons of sense. BFR *should* be a little easier since it is only a F9R booster only ten times bigger. BFS is obviously harder for many reasons.

Then again, even if the propellant mass fraction takes a major hit (planned: 95%, so let's say 90% or less) it won't be too much of an issue since on Earth, BFR is there to help on the way to 10 km/s and orbit.

Well, as Musk said, "Earth is wrong planet for a SSTO"
Now if you takes these words a little too seriously...
Mars surface to Mars orbit is 4 km/s (one way) Moon surface to Moon orbit is 2.5 km/s (one way). So dare I say, there are some *margins* for BFS, even if it ends too heavy for Earth SSTO, it can still be SSTO-on-Mars or SSTO-on-Moon (I'm kidding !).

When I started toying with the rocket equation a while back, it amazed me how fast can SSTO go down the drain according to the propellant mass fraction (pmf)
For example, if the initial targeted pmf was 93% but the final product goes slightly overweight, and the pmf drops to 88%, one might 5% ain't much of an issue, yet because of the logarithm in the equation, the SSTO max delta-v drops far below orbital velocity - and it drops very very fast, damn it. You ends with a miserable 6 km/s, far short of 9 km/s.

 

[NeilChapman]

Just to be clear, it is neither the ITS (they gave up on that acronym) nor the BFR that they are currently building. It is the BFS - Big F*ing Ship.

That is the part that goes on top of the booster, which together form the BFR.

The BFS will start doing hops, similarly to what Grasshopper did a few years ago (the rocket that took off and landed repeatedly in Texas to develop the Falcon 9 landing technique).

BFS will fly progressively higher and if they meet their empty weight target on the prototype, BFS should eventually be capable of Single Stage to Orbit with little or no payload on board.

The complete BFR flights are still a few years down the road.

Ahhh. Thank you for that. I heard what I wanted to hear. Just watched it again and I caught 'ship' will fly in first half of 2019.

I did understand correctly that 'BFR' flights are expected to be $5-6 million marginal costs.

Still impressive.

 

[Flyaway]

Musk reiterates plans for testing BFR

WASHINGTON — SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said March 11 the company could begin tests of part of its Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) launch system as soon as next year, reiterating a schedule he provided last month.

Musk participated in an on-stage interview, announced on less than a day’s notice, at the South By Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas. During the appearance, he said the company was progressing on the development of BFR, which features a first-stage booster and upper-stage “spaceship,” the latter able to travel to and land on the moon or Mars.

“We’re making good progress on the ship and the booster,” he said. “That design is evolving rapidly” from his presentation about the BFR concept at the International Astronautical Congress in Australia in September 2017, which itself was a revision of the design presented at the same conference a year earlier in Mexico.

Construction of the first prototype spaceship is in progress. “We’re actually building that ship right now,” he said. “I think we’ll probably be able to do short flights, short sort of up-and-down flights, probably sometime in the first half of next year.”

http://spacenews.com/musk-reiterates-plans-for-testing-bfr/

 

[Archibald]

I presume the flights will be automated. "Let's not play russian roulette" (the late John Young about trying a shuttle RTLS)

 

[Dragon029]

It'll be something like this, only with a much bigger rocket:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGimzB5QM1M

 

[TomS]

I presume the flights will be automated. "Let's not play russian roulette" (the late John Young about trying a shuttle RTLS)

Certainly. The whole flight control process will be automated anyway, so putting a human on board during testing would be an unjustifiable risk.

 

[fredymac]

From Spaceflight Now

"Musk: Atmospheric tests of interplanetary spaceship could happen next year"
https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/03/13/musk-atmospheric-tests-of-interplanetary-spaceship-could-happen-next-year/

“We are building the first ship, the first Mars or interplanetary ship, right now, and I think we’ll probably be able to do short flights, short sort of up-and-down flights probably in the first half of next year,” Musk said Sunday during an appearance at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.".....

"Musk said the BFR will be able to deliver a payload of up to 330,000 pounds — 150 metric tons — to a low orbit just above Earth’s atmosphere, a figure that exceeds the maximum lift capacity of the Saturn 5, while accounting for a fuel reserve and performance penalty for landing and reuse."......

“A BFR flight will actually cost less than our Falcon 1 flights did back in the day,” he said. “That was about a $5 million or $6 million marginal cost per flight, and we’re confident that BFR will be less than that.”.........