SpaceX’s Satellite Rideshare Costs More Than a Million Dollars. Is it Worth It?
Fun with physics
Who among us hasn’t wanted to put our own satellite in orbit? Soon it won’t be as hard as it sounds, thanks to the new Rideshare program from SpaceX. Basically, it’s a carpool service for satellites. SpaceX will send up several small payloads and each customer will pay based on the mass of their spacecraft. All of them will ride together on the Falcon 9 rocket. Along the way, these satellites can fight over the radio and annoy each other just like humans in the carpool lane.
How much does it cost?
The SpaceX Rideshare page has a nice interface: You just input your payload mass and it will calculate your cost. There is a minimum launch cost of $1 million, but after that is there a linear relationship between mass and cost? Let’s find out.
Basically, I just picked some values of satellite mass for low Earth orbit (LEO) and let it tell me the price. Here is a plot of the cost as a function of mass.
Pretty linear. Also, you know I don’t really trust anyone. I had to check and make sure that there was a…
