Because of a relentless focus on costs and cheap building materials, such as stainless steel, SpaceX can likely build and launch a fully expendable version of Starship for about $100 million. Most of that money is in the booster, with its 33 engines. So once Super Heavy becomes reusable, you can probably cut manufacturing costs down to about $30 million per launch.

This means that, within a year or so, SpaceX will have a rocket that costs about $30 million and lifts 100 to 150 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.

Bluntly, this is absurd.

For fun, we could compare that to some existing rockets. NASA’s Space Launch System, for example, can lift up to 95 tons to low-Earth orbit. That’s nearly as much as Starship. But it costs $2.2 billion per launch, plus additional ground systems fees. So it’s almost a factor of 100 times more expensive for less throw weight.