Elon Musk: Satellite Launch Costs to Plummet Soon, Driven by SpaceX Reusability

• Elon Musk predicts a drastic reduction in satellite launch costs, potentially by a factor of 100, due to SpaceX's efforts to make Falcon 9 rockets fully reusable.
• SpaceX's Falcon 9, launched in 2010, achieved a significant breakthrough with reusable boosters, reducing launch costs to $62 million by 2018, a fraction of NASA's previous expenses.
• Musk highlighted that while the booster stage has been landed over 500 times, the upper stage is still discarded, costing an amount equivalent to a small to medium-sized jet.
• The cost of heavy launches to low-Earth orbit has already fallen from $65,000 per kilogram to $1,500 per kilogram by 2021, as per McKinsey estimates.
• This cost reduction is expected to significantly boost the space economy, with Goldman Sachs forecasting the satellite market to grow to $108 billion by 2035 from $15 billion currently.

Why It Matters: SpaceX's reusable rocket technology is set to drastically cut satellite launch costs, fueling a boom in the space economy.