SpaceX Starlink Satellites Could Cost $250,000 Each and Falcon 9 Costs Less than $30 Million

Elon Musk and SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell have said that the per-satellite Starlink cost is already well below $500,000. This means that the internal cost of a Falcon 9 launch is less than $30 million.

SpaceX could already have $250,000 per Starlink satellite cost and $15 million per launch cost.

A Morgan Stanley analysis overestimated the cost of launching Starlink. Morgan Stanley’s assumed $1 million cost per Starlink satellite with a $50 million cost per launch. Morgan Stanley through SpaceX would have a value of $120+ billion assuming a future deployment of Starlink.

Morgan Stanley thought launching 30,000 broadband satellites could require ~$60b of incremental capital. It will require well below $30 billion. The cost per Starlink is already well below $500,000 and internal per launch cost is less than $30 million for F9. SpaceX could already have the capability for $15-30 billion to launch 30,000 Starlinks.

The SpaceX Super Heavy Starship costs and speed of launch would all massively improve. The SpaceX Super Heavy Starship could make the fully reusable cost per launch $5 million or less and it would be able to launch over 180 satellites each time. Instead of $60 billion to deploy 30,000 satellites, it could be only $3-5 billion.

If the costs are not already at the $30 million for satellites and launch they will be at that level early in 2020. In 2020, SpaceX cost will be about $300 million for the 10 launches for 600 operational satellite network in the first half of the year. They plan 24 launches which would put up 1400+ satellites.