SpaceX could use rockets to fly people around Earth more cheaply than airplanes

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk just showed this jaw-dropping video at the International Astronautical Congress:

That left me curious: how much would this actually cost? Here’s my back-of-the-envelope math:

$62 million per Falcon 9 launch

/ 40,212 lbs of payload in drone ship landing configuration (estimate)

= $1542/lb

182 lbs per average American

* $1542/lb

= $280,644 per average American

$280,644

/ 100 full reuses of a Falcon 9 (hypothetical)

= $2,306 for a ticket on a Falcon 9

Assuming the BFR can be reused at least 100 times, a ticket on a BFR would be even cheaper than a ticket on a Falcon 9. It would be more than 10x cheaper if it can be reused 1,000 times, as Musk previously stated when he unveiled the first version of the BFR design.

That would put the price of a ticket at less than $230.

The price of a trip from New York to Shanghai by plane? Around $400.

Wow.

Update: While I was writing this post, Musk said this on Instagram: “Fly to most places on Earth in under 30 mins and anywhere in under 60. Cost per seat should be about the same as full fare economy in an aircraft. Forgot to mention that.”

Update #2: A few people have pointed out to me that each launch has costs like fuel and labour that can’t be divided by 100 or 1,000 like the cost of the rocket itself. My estimate of $230 per ticket is therefore too low.