dumb question, but at what point does the cost of fuel start to become an issue with such frequent launches? today I imagine launch cost is dominated by the price of the nonrecoverable parts, but fuel will become the floor no?

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GMoromisato 39 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, but it's an order of magnitude difference. Today a Falcon 9 launch cost ~$20 million, mostly because they throw away the second stage.

Propellant for a Falcon 9 launch is ~$500K.

	▲	gorkish 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Starship is more efficient than F9 but in terms of multiple launches per day, the supply chain is indeed a factor. An hourly launch cadence is going to consume roughly as much natural gas as Houston.

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gorkish 15 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

All back of envelope here just to get a rough order of magnitude:

Starship needs 10kg (0.5mcf) of methane and 36kg of oxygen per kg to orbit. The oxygen takes 22kWh to liquefy or about (0.16mcf to generate that onsite). So 0.66mcf/kg to orbit and 66,000mcf from to fully fuel.

That is the daily gas usage of a midisze city, say 200k population, per launch.