You definitely have something mixed up. Maybe you are thinking of sending cargo in a Dragon capsule to the ISS.

We don't know the exact internal cost to SpaceX to launch a Falcon 9, but it is somewhere around $30 million. Each launch can put up 60 Starlink satellites, so that is around half a million each. Anyone can buy launches for much less than $5k/lb, that would be $185 million for a reusable F9 or $250 million for an expendable F9.

Your napkin-math estimates are too high.

It isn't his decision to make. He is one of the major Amazon stockholders, but he doesn't own that majority and even if he did he would have a responsibility to act in the best interest of the other stockholders. He can't just burn Amazon's money for his own personal reasons.

Satellites have to be orbital to stay up. What kind of non-orbital internet service are you thinking of? Running cables on the ground certainly works.

Also the SpaceX bid offered vastly more capability for half the price. I wonder if anyone at BO actually believes that they had the better bid.

I never met Sergei Korolev, he died before I was born. The fact remains he was Ukrainian, born in Zhytomyr about 140 km west of Kyiv. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, but Ukraine was not part of Russia. Being Ukrainian when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union does not make someone Russian.

Korolev was Ukrainian, not Russian.

The patent system is so broken when you can add something trivial like "on a website" or "to hit kindergarteners" to the end of an existing idea and get a patent.

Falcon Heavy is a lot less than 1/8th the cost of an SLS launch. The number you hear most for SLS launch cost is $4.1 billion, but that includes Orion. SLS without a payload costs $2.8 billion to launch. Falcon Heavy is listed as $150 million for a fully expendable launch and that is an old number so it could have gone up since then.

Comparing those number (even if we assume a higher price for FH) looks bad enough for SLS, but remember that SLS launch cost does not include development costs. Development costs are tens of billions and counting, paid separately. Falcon Heavy was developed with private money, the launch price includes both the actual cost to launch and a operating profit so that they can recoup development costs. If you include a portion of development costs in the price of an SLS launch it would be billions more.

We don't know how big a portion of development costs to include in the price of each launch, but it is safe to say that SLS costs at least 20 times as much as FH.

The SLS was supposed to launch 6 years ago.

Yeah, and if you actually wanted a sustainable program you could just skip the SLS/Orion part.

Each SLS/Orion launch is $4.1 billion, but that only gets you to lunar orbit.

NASA is a lot more than just pork projects like the SLS.

Falcon Heavy can do a lot of what SLS is supposed to do and Starship can do so much more, but that is beside the point.

NASA can and does award development contracts for things that don't exist yet. It works much better when NASA specifies the goals and only pays the contractor when they achieve milestones. This holds the contractor accountable for results. The other option is a cost-plus contract like the SLS program where the contractor gets paid more if they spend more. There is little incentive to actually deliver results.

$2.2 billion for the rocket itself, $600 million for ground support, $1.3 billion for the Orion capsule, and none of that includes any development costs.

> Elon said that will never happen

Do you have a source for that? Specifically that they would not do it for a paying customer? From what I recall they have said the opposite. You may have heard a statement that they don't think they will ever have a customer want to pay to human rate FH when Starship is better and cheaper.

> SLS is ready to carry humans right now

Either it is ready or it is not. It needs to be tested first and will not be ready to carry humans for a few years assuming everything goes according to plan. It would be ridiculously dangerous to put humans on an untested rocket, not to mention the capsule on top does not yet have a full life support system and the Artemis 1 launch will not have a working launch escape system.

Falcon Heavy will be human rated if their is a customer to pay for it. SLS is years away from being ready to carry humans. Falcon Heavy could easily be ready to carry humans before SLS is ready to carry humans.

Cost savings would undermine the primary purpose of the program.

The war is Putin's responsibility, and it is also the responsibility of the Russian people.