Per-engine costs of $1 million or so as well

@TheMatrixEquation-balance Super Heavy can't return from LEO, so this config means expending SH and should be more expensive than refu

refurb. unless the refurb is catastrophically costly

I can imagine single Starship missions to GTO, but nothing beyond that.

@PearsonArtPhoto I swear I’ve seen a curve plotted for a single Starship of payload vs velocity/orbit height, but I couldn’t locate it quickly. I recall it starting with a lot of payload and dropping precipitously as it was asked to add more delta-v beyond getting to LEO. It’s not clear (to me) whether the numbers I’ve seen for GTO include recovering the second stage or not.

@ErinAnne - (in terms of interplanetary capabilities) Getting a 120-ton Starship to LEO and then requiring 10-15 refueling launches - is not a revolution in space technical capabilities. It is just a hard and possibly farfetched option. But having powerful 2-nd and 3-d stages (launched by SH) instead of Starship, could allow direct flight to planets without flybys. This is revolutionary (in my view). And reusable SH will make it inexpensive.

by gosh we should launch POWERFUL rockets

I'll start calling people! this will be revolutionary

We did have powerful rockets before. But at a price ($250 million). SH will do it for $25 million (including price of 2-nd and 3-d stages).

Also, engines never cost $2 million, like Raptor right now.

The second stage needs only one engine.

Example: "Europa Clipper" - "The SLS option would have entailed a direct trajectory to Jupiter taking less than three years." Falcon Heavy was chosen to launch the spacecraft and saved an estimated US$2 billion in launch costs alone. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper

Now, with SH, you can launch it directly to Jupiter, and practically for free.

This is what I call - revolution.

@TheMatrixEquation-balance where are you getting high performance dirt cheap upper stages from?

SpaceX - steel fabrication "dirt cheap". SpaceX engines - also "dirt cheap". These are new - commercial enterprise prices.

Any second stage - cannot cost more than Starship.

but starship costs too much somehow

Starship is too heavy. Why would you need 120 useless tones for interplanetary research?

tons