this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
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Falcon9 bring the cost of launching something to LEO down by an order of magnitude?
Plus without SpaceX, our only ride to space would be the Soyuz
Ariane would like a word.
I'm not aware of any human rated spacecraft being launched with Ariane. I know there were some concepts for at least Ariane 5, and it would be cool for Europe to be independent on this.
Ariane has an astronaut ferry and reentry vehicle? That's news to me. Also: they're more than 2x as expensive per kg to orbit.
Soooooo... Kind of...
I didn't check the cargo numbers but for Crewed missions we have some nice estimates from the OIG in 2024 based on the crew program development costs and the built-in 6 flight missions we got for the contracts:
Soyuz was ~ 20 million a seat in 2007, 2013 it was ~ 55 million a seat, and 2014-2018 it was 62 million a seat, now it's that 86 number.
Funny thing is happening at SpaceX recently, namely NASA used up all 6 flights that were 55 million a seat, so they needed to extend for flights 7-9 and 10-14
In February 2022 NASA Extended their contract with SpaceX for flights 7-9 at around 258 million per flight (so ~64.5 million per seat) and again in June 2022 for flights 10-14 at 288 million per flight (so ~72 million per seat)
So SpaceX came out of the gate with their handfuls of investor cash and subsidized the original contracts, but they're likely rapidly increasing prices now that they've burned through most of that runway.
I wasnt really thinking about crewed mission tbh, more the cost per tonne which Space X certainly brought down dramatically (though not quite by an order of magnitude).