Why launch costs dropped but may not keep dropping

In a study published in PNAS Nexus on July 14, two researchers affiliated with institutes in France, Italy, and the UK analysed more than 4,400 launches in 16 geographical entities and with 330 rocket configurations to find that every time the cumulative payload sent to orbit has doubled since 1960, the average cost of sending 1 kg of payload to low-Earth orbit has dropped by 21.2% and that this correlation outperforms the effects of other technologies on the kilogram cost to orbit. Specifically, the cost has dropped from $87,023 per kg in 1960 to $3,878 per kg in 2025. They also identified a particular inflection point in 2010, when the SpaceX Falcon 9 entered operations. Credit: Alessio Terzi According to the researchers, the fixed drop in cost with doubling of payload mass is called Wright’s law — and if the relationship continues to hold, they projected the launch cost to drop to $1,600 per kg by 2030 and even $300 per kg by 2040. These numbers sound phenomenal, so much so that…