Research Note: Launch Cost Is Only the First Line Item
Published May 2026
Question
Personal lunar access cannot be priced from launch alone. Launch is the visible invoice, but a crewed lunar route also carries transfer, landing, life support, mission operations, safety margin, recovery, and regulation. CosmosExplore starts by separating the cost stack before asking what can fall.
Source-Backed Data Points
- NASA lists the Moon's average distance from Earth as 238,855 miles, or 384,400 kilometers. Source: NASA Moon Facts.
- NASA OIG projected a single SLS/Orion launch through Artemis IV at $4.1 billion, including about $1.0 billion for Orion, $300 million for the European Service Module, $2.2 billion for SLS, and $568 million for Exploration Ground Systems. Source: NASA OIG IG-22-003.
- SpaceX's rideshare page advertises $350,000 for 50 kg to sun-synchronous orbit, with additional mass at $7,000/kg. Source: SpaceX Rideshare.
Reading
The $7,000/kg anchor is useful because it makes orbital access visible. It is also dangerous if copied into a lunar crew model without other lines. A person is not a cubesat. A lunar route has crew systems, abort logic, thermal margins, docking, surface time, return, and verification.
The SLS/Orion estimate is useful for the opposite reason. It shows how a national-scale architecture bundles production and operations into a large mission-level figure. CosmosExplore should not treat that figure as a physical floor, but it should treat it as a serious baseline for what current crewed lunar infrastructure costs when safety and operations are inside the number.
Model Rule
The cost model must keep "price to orbit" separate from "modeled lunar access." Launch-price reductions are only one curve. The model should always expose fixed crew-system assumptions so a lower launch price does not hide the cost that remains.