By comparison, Falcon Heavy costs about $62M per launch, but Gwynne Shotwell predicted they can shave 40% off that price tag when they start re-using heavies.
But Elon has supposedly said the TDC (total development cost) of the Starship is projected to be 2-10 billion. [I found this at the Daily Mail website, so take it with as large a grain of salt as you wish.]
If it costs $10B to build one and $10M per launch and you get 10 launches per vehicle, that's $1.1B per launch if you amortize the development costs. But if it takes $2B to build one and $2M per launch and you get 10 launches, then it's only $220M per launch. But if you build five operational starships that each have 10 launches each, things start to get downright affordable.
So if the question is how much has SpaceX spent on the Starship to date? I don't know that's public info. If the question is how much will they spend on development, the answer is $2B-$10B (though that's from the Daily Mail.) If the question is how much will each launch cost (including amortizing development costs)? It could be as cheap as $42M. Or depending on how much of the $2.9B from NASA they're able to apply to previous development costs... who knows!? They could make $1.6M per launch as long as the GSA doesn't audit them too closely.
There's a myth in US government purchasing that competition drives costs down, and that's probably true for commodities. But Starship class super-heavy-launch vehicles aren't commodities. There's a TREMENDOUS amount of cost (both opportunity cost and dollars) associated with fiscal oversight of large projects. The hope has always been that when Blue Origin built something to compete, it would bring total costs down. I am skeptical.
They literally have another booster/starship ready to go. The project cost may be 2-10B but the individual launch vehicles will cost less than 200M$ each.
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-spacex-starship-ro...
By comparison, Falcon Heavy costs about $62M per launch, but Gwynne Shotwell predicted they can shave 40% off that price tag when they start re-using heavies.
https://spacedotbiz.substack.com/p/is-starship-really-going-...
But Elon has supposedly said the TDC (total development cost) of the Starship is projected to be 2-10 billion. [I found this at the Daily Mail website, so take it with as large a grain of salt as you wish.]
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11994755/Wha...
If it costs $10B to build one and $10M per launch and you get 10 launches per vehicle, that's $1.1B per launch if you amortize the development costs. But if it takes $2B to build one and $2M per launch and you get 10 launches, then it's only $220M per launch. But if you build five operational starships that each have 10 launches each, things start to get downright affordable.
So if the question is how much has SpaceX spent on the Starship to date? I don't know that's public info. If the question is how much will they spend on development, the answer is $2B-$10B (though that's from the Daily Mail.) If the question is how much will each launch cost (including amortizing development costs)? It could be as cheap as $42M. Or depending on how much of the $2.9B from NASA they're able to apply to previous development costs... who knows!? They could make $1.6M per launch as long as the GSA doesn't audit them too closely.
There's a myth in US government purchasing that competition drives costs down, and that's probably true for commodities. But Starship class super-heavy-launch vehicles aren't commodities. There's a TREMENDOUS amount of cost (both opportunity cost and dollars) associated with fiscal oversight of large projects. The hope has always been that when Blue Origin built something to compete, it would bring total costs down. I am skeptical.