Cost Per KilogramWide moat

SpaceX (SPCX) — moat facet

The number that reordered an industry — orbit at a fraction of anyone else's price.

The whole story reduces to one figure: the cost to place a kilogram in orbit. For half a century that number averaged about $18,500, by NASA's reckoning as quoted in SpaceX's prospectus, set by expendable rockets that were magnificent and ruinously wasteful — you built a skyscraper's worth of engineering and threw it away on a single flight.1 The first Falcon 9 in 2010 cut it to about $2,700, and the first Falcon Heavy in 2018 to about $1,400.2 Reuse carried the number down from there, and it is that single number that pulled commercial customers, governments, and eventually its own Starlink satellites onto its rockets.

Mass to orbit per launch (metric tons)12.3202312.3202413.0202514.2Q2 2512.8Q2 26Mass to orbit / launches; prospectus key metrics and Q2 2026 release
SpaceX does not publish cost per kilogram; payload per launch, the lever that drives it, has barely moved since 2023.

The advantage is durable because it is not a discount SpaceX chooses to offer — it is a structurally lower cost base. A rival still flying expendable hardware cannot match the price without losing money on every flight, and a rival trying to match the reuse must first spend the decade and the wreckage SpaceX already spent. Price that reflects a genuinely lower cost, rather than a temporary subsidy, is the most defensible kind there is. It is also the number that makes Starlink possible at all: launching thousands of satellites only pencils out when your own launch is this cheap — the arithmetic beneath Starlink's 12.0 million subscribers at the end of June 2026.3 SpaceX does not publish its own cost per kilogram today; what it publishes is volume, 2,213 metric tons to orbit in 2025 against 1,210 in 2023.4

Moat trajectory: Widening

Widening. Each additional reflight spreads a booster's build cost over more missions and drives the marginal cost of orbit lower still, and no competitor has closed the order-of-magnitude gap in more than a decade of trying.

The number that tests this moat
Moat Explorer calc
Mass to orbit per launch, latest quarter
12.8 t in Q2 2026 (485 t on 38 launches), from 14.2 t a year earlier

Cost per kilogram falls when each flight carries more. A falling payload per launch means cadence is being bought with lighter missions, which is the opposite of what Starship is meant to deliver.

How it's calculated: 485 metric tons / 38 launches (Q2 2026); 652 / 46 (Q2 2025).
Source: SpaceX Q2 2026 results release (Form 8-K exhibit 99.1, 4 August 2026) ↗
⚠ Threats to the moat
⚠ THREAT 01
The Number Nobody Else Publishes
A cost lead is a moat only until someone matches it.
References
  1. ReportedFor half a century that number averaged about $18,500, by NASA's reckoning as quoted in SpaceX's prospectus, set by expendable rockets that were magnificent and ruinously wasteful — you built a skyscraper's worth of engineering and threw it away on a single flight.
    SpaceX IPO prospectus (Form 424B4, 11 June 2026) - net income (loss) $(4,628)M, $791M and $(4,937)M for 2023-2025 (2024 aided by a $549M tax benefit and $985M of other income); mass to orbit 1,210, 1,699 and 2,213 metric tons (customer payloads 205, 282 and 312; internal 1,005, 1,418 and 1,901); launches 98, 138 and 170; Starlink subscribers 2.3M, 4.4M, 8.9M and 10.3M (March 2026); ARPU $99, $91, $81 and $66; NASA figures of $18,500 per kilogram historical average, about $2,700 for the first Falcon 9 (2010, about 85% less) and about $1,400 for the first Falcon Heavy (2018); Customer A 25.2%, 24.2% and 20.9% of revenue, across all three segments; backlog $27,621M at 31 March 2026; about 650 V1 Mobile satellites, about 30 MNO partners covering about 1.9 billion people; no inter-segment revenue on internal constellation deployments; Starship expected to begin payload delivery to orbit in 2H 2026, with next-generation V3 and V2 Mobile satellites dependent on it — FY2023-FY2025 and Q1 2026 · publ. June 11, 2026 · source ↗
  2. ReportedThe first Falcon 9 in 2010 cut it to about $2,700, and the first Falcon Heavy in 2018 to about $1,400.
    SpaceX IPO prospectus (Form 424B4, 11 June 2026) - net income (loss) $(4,628)M, $791M and $(4,937)M for 2023-2025 (2024 aided by a $549M tax benefit and $985M of other income); mass to orbit 1,210, 1,699 and 2,213 metric tons (customer payloads 205, 282 and 312; internal 1,005, 1,418 and 1,901); launches 98, 138 and 170; Starlink subscribers 2.3M, 4.4M, 8.9M and 10.3M (March 2026); ARPU $99, $91, $81 and $66; NASA figures of $18,500 per kilogram historical average, about $2,700 for the first Falcon 9 (2010, about 85% less) and about $1,400 for the first Falcon Heavy (2018); Customer A 25.2%, 24.2% and 20.9% of revenue, across all three segments; backlog $27,621M at 31 March 2026; about 650 V1 Mobile satellites, about 30 MNO partners covering about 1.9 billion people; no inter-segment revenue on internal constellation deployments; Starship expected to begin payload delivery to orbit in 2H 2026, with next-generation V3 and V2 Mobile satellites dependent on it — FY2023-FY2025 and Q1 2026 · publ. June 11, 2026 · source ↗
  3. ReportedIt is also the number that makes Starlink possible at all: launching thousands of satellites only pencils out when your own launch is this cheap — the arithmetic beneath Starlink's 12.0 million subscribers at the end of June 2026.
    SpaceX Q2 2026 results release (Form 8-K exhibit 99.1, 4 August 2026) - revenue $7,814M (+92%); Space $962M, Connectivity $4,291M, AI $2,561M (Q2 2025: $746M, $2,588M, $737M); net loss $541M against $1,008M; adjusted EBITDA $3.5B; AI segment adjusted EBITDA $1,146M against $(609)M in Q1, operating loss $1,257M; capex $18,369M ($15,828M AI; $2,825M a year earlier), $28,476M in the first half; nameplate compute 1.4 GW from 1.0 GW; cloud services agreements of $14.1B contracted sales adding $1.6B of AI infrastructure revenue; advertising $367M and AI solutions & infrastructure $2,194M (Q2 2025: $426M and $311M); Starlink subscribers 12.0M (+1.7M in the quarter, 6.0M a year earlier), ARPU $66 against $85; Connectivity revenue +66%; launches 38 against 46 and 78 in the half against 84; mass to orbit 485 t against 652 t; Starship Flight 12 (May) and Flight 13 (July, 20 production V3 satellites deployed); agreement to acquire Cursor for $60B; IPO net proceeds about $85.7B; $25B bond; $100B of cash and marketable securities; backlog $47.5B — Q2 2026 · publ. August 4, 2026 · source ↗
  4. ReportedSpaceX does not publish its own cost per kilogram today; what it publishes is volume, 2,213 metric tons to orbit in 2025 against 1,210 in 2023.
    SpaceX IPO prospectus (Form 424B4, 11 June 2026) - net income (loss) $(4,628)M, $791M and $(4,937)M for 2023-2025 (2024 aided by a $549M tax benefit and $985M of other income); mass to orbit 1,210, 1,699 and 2,213 metric tons (customer payloads 205, 282 and 312; internal 1,005, 1,418 and 1,901); launches 98, 138 and 170; Starlink subscribers 2.3M, 4.4M, 8.9M and 10.3M (March 2026); ARPU $99, $91, $81 and $66; NASA figures of $18,500 per kilogram historical average, about $2,700 for the first Falcon 9 (2010, about 85% less) and about $1,400 for the first Falcon Heavy (2018); Customer A 25.2%, 24.2% and 20.9% of revenue, across all three segments; backlog $27,621M at 31 March 2026; about 650 V1 Mobile satellites, about 30 MNO partners covering about 1.9 billion people; no inter-segment revenue on internal constellation deployments; Starship expected to begin payload delivery to orbit in 2H 2026, with next-generation V3 and V2 Mobile satellites dependent on it — FY2023-FY2025 and Q1 2026 · publ. June 11, 2026 · source ↗
Sources
Generated September 23, 2026