Cost Effectiveness of Reusable Launch Vehicles Depending on the Payload Capacity
Si-Yoon Kang, Min-Seon Jo, Jeong‐Yeol Choi, Soo Seok Yang
Abstract
Recently, in the space market, there has been a rapid reduction in the launch price. The major reason for this is that a few commercial companies began to enter the space market about ten years ago, which has changed the space market from monopolization to competition and accelerated the adoption of commercial efficiency in technology and management. Also, SpaceX made a breakthrough by successfully recovering the first stage of its launch vehicle in 2016, thereby opening the door to reusable launch vehicles. They have declared their intention to significantly reduce satellite launch costs in the future by utilizing the potential of reusable launch vehicles. In this study, we calculate the total launch cost required to place a single satellite into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and compare the launch costs for three different payload capacity scenarios, investigating how payload capacity affects the cost-effectiveness of reusable launch vehicles. The launch cost is broken down into development costs, production costs, reuse costs, operational costs, fixed costs, and insurance costs, with cost estimation equations utilized based on cost calculation models such as TRANSCOST.