Not quite as cheap as London to New York, agreed, but not much more than what I paid for a round trip from Toronto to Australia some years ago. The cost of the fuel is negligible (a Falcon 9 costs $60M to build and $200k to fuel). Currently, all our human rated rocket engines use chemical reactions (combustion of a fuel and oxidizer) to produce the energy. I like to think of this as the travel cost. Because of its reliable and innovative technology, it is both cost effective and more feasible when compared to the pressure fed and turbopump designs.

If you want to compare cost/lb, you need to use the unfueled weight. We simply have to accept its consequences. Figuring me at 200 pounds, that's $2000. Solid rocket fuel is just that: a thick mixture of fuel and oxidizer that is poured into a rocket booster, cooked to a pencil-eraser consistency, and set on fire during launch. Kerosene costs depend on grade, but expensive rocket-grade stuff is maybe 25c/pound. Next we need to choose the type of rocket propellant, thus specifying the available energy. SpaceX’s much-anticipated Starship rocket could only cost $2 million per mission. Re: Price (or cost) of rocket engines « Reply #18 on: 06/05/2017 01:12 pm » Ok, so which booster engine is best as a cost/kg delivered to space for booster engines. A rocket that will be traveling into space burns a lot of fuel and will need enough to keep it in orbit for teh desired time. $0.0015/gallon + $1.80/kg (gge) Refining Costs = $1.8015 = $1.80/kg (gge) using Compressed Electrolyses.NOTE: It takes 3 gallons of water to make 1 kg of hydrogen, 1 gallon of water = 0.38 kg of hydrogen, roughly a 3:1 ratio.

$\endgroup$ – Hobbes Sep 23 '16 at 18:37 $\begingroup$ D'oh.


The Flometrics Pistonless rocket fuel pump is a highly reliable pump that uses two pumping chambers alternatively filled with fluid and pressurized in sequence to maintain a steady flow of pressurized propellant to a rocket engine. So the average mix cost is circa 10c/pound, and total propellant costs are about $10 per pound of payload.