Sources
The line behind every figure in W1, and the two the issue refused to print.
Every figure in this issue traces to a line here, with publisher, publication date where available, and the date I accessed it. All access dates are 2026-09-06 unless stated.
Where two credible sources disagree, both are listed and the disagreement is stated in the issue rather than averaged away. The full archive of sources verified for the pre-cut draft — including everything now held as seed material for later issues — is kept in the repository as sources-full.md; it is not published, because it cites work that has not run yet.
Retained for this issue
| # | Source | Publisher | Pub date | Supports | Archived |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | The Recent Large Reduction in Space Launch Cost (ICES-2018-81) | NASA Ames / 48th Int'l Conf. on Environmental Systems (Harry W. Jones) | 2018-07-08 | Shuttle full-programme average $54,545/kg ($1.5B ÷ 27,500 kg) and $61,709/kg in 2018 dollars; Falcon 9 list $2,719/kg ($62M ÷ 22,800 kg); Falcon Heavy $1,411/kg; Saturn V $5,200/kg; NAFCOM comparison $443M vs $1,383M development; "reuse ... has not so far actually cut cost"; smaller payloads raise effective cost per kg; Shuttle-to-ISS $105,732/kg vs Falcon 9 + Dragon ~$25,000/kg | 2026-08-29 |
| C5 | The Annual Compendium of Commercial Space Transportation: 2018, Table 1, p.23 | FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation | 2018-01 | Falcon 9 $61.2M against an FAA-stated LEO capacity of 13,150 kg, giving $4,654/kg — the payload-denominator conflict with C1; Falcon Heavy $270M estimate; Atlas V price range $110M–$230M | refused (HTTP 500), 2026-09-13 |
| C6 | Rocket Lab Corporation Form 10-K, FY2025 | SEC EDGAR (CIK 1819994) | filed 2026 | Audited price and cost on the same vehicle: FY2025 revenue per launch $8.5M vs cost per launch $4.8M (44% gap); FY2024 $7.8M vs $5.7M; FY2023 $7.1M vs $7.0M. Electron capacity up to 300 kg to LEO. Neutron ~13,000 kg reusable to LEO, no price disclosed | 2026-09-14 |
| C7 | SpaceX rideshare pricing API | SpaceX (live endpoint) | accessed 2026-09-06 | SpaceX primary. Transporter rideshare list price $7,000/kg for 2026, on a published ladder of $5,500 (2023), $6,000 (2024), $6,500 (2025), $7,000 (2026), $7,500 (2027); 50 kg minimum, $350,000 entry | 2026-09-14 |
| C9 | Starship | SpaceX | accessed 2026-09-06 | SpaceX primary. Capability claim of more than 100 t to orbit fully reusable; the only published rate is $100,000/kg ($100M per tonne) to the Martian surface, cargo flights no earlier than 2028; for LEO, only a qualitative statement of lower marginal cost than Falcon. No published $/kg to LEO | 2026-09-05 |
| D1 | Kuiper Systems / Amazon Leo | Wikipedia | accessed 2026-09-06 | 396 production satellites launched as of July 2026 against an FCC milestone of half of 3,236 (1,618) by 2026-07-30; milestone missed; FCC waived the deadline in June 2026 while temporarily reducing spectral priority for satellites launched after it; over $10B committed to launch contracts; providers ULA Atlas V (9), Ariane 6 (18), New Glenn (12 plus 15 options), Falcon 9 (13, including 10 bought in January 2026); most recent launch LA-08 on 2026-07-02 | 2026-08-21 |
| D2 | SpaceX Form 424B4 | SpaceX via SEC EDGAR | 2026-06-12 | FY2025 Connectivity segment: revenue $11,387M, cost of revenue $5,921M, D&A $2,376M, capex $4,178M, Segment Adj. EBITDA $7,168M. Accounting policy: satellite cost includes build and capitalised launch. Space segment cost of revenue fell 12.2% in 2025, attributed to Falcon reuse lowering depreciation by $240M. Mass to orbit 2,213 t in 2025, of which 1,901 t internal and 312 t customer; Falcon 9 averages 13 t per mission. 165 Falcon launches in 2025 (122 internal). $19.6B for 65 MHz of EchoStar spectrum ($11.1B in shares at closing + up to $8.5B of EchoStar debt). Two-step structure: licences transferred to a trust (May 2026); acquisition closing to SpaceX pending, with payments through at least 2027-11-30 (10-Q, D3). Corrected 2026-09-14 — the draft said "closed May 2026". Subscribers 2.3M (2023) to 12.0M (Q2 2026); ARPU $99 to $66. Satellite production ~70/week. Starship "up to 60 V3 satellites" per launch. Design life ~5 years. Terminal cost and availability named as an explicit dependency. Company framing that prohibitive access cost "historically rendered" the business unviable — past tense | refused (HTTP 500), 2026-09-13 |
| D3 | SpaceX Form 10-Q, Q2 2026 | SpaceX via SEC EDGAR | 2026-08-04 | Gross capitalised satellite PP&E $7,591M (Dec 2024), $11,949M (Dec 2025), $13,788M (Jun 2026) — the audited gross book value of the constellation, against which the $19.6B spectrum purchase is compared | 2026-09-14 |
| D18 | Towards a future space-based, highly scalable AI infrastructure system design | Agüera y Arcas et al., Google (arXiv:2511.19468) | 2025-11-22, rev. 2026-06-17 | The $200/kg threshold and its provenance: inherited from space solar power's $500/kg-to-GTO figure, converted to LEO. Google's baseline $3,600/kg; ~180 Starship launches/year on a 20% learning rate to reach it by ~2035. States that at $200/kg, launch amortised over spacecraft lifetime becomes roughly comparable, per kW, to a terrestrial data centre's energy cost ("Launch cost analysis" section; confirmed by direct fetch 2026-09-14). Assumes 20.5 kg/kW. Explicit scope caveat: "We do not include infrastructure or building costs… or chip costs". Trillium TPU survived 15 krad(Si) with no hard failures against a ~750 rad five-year requirement | 2026-09-14 |
| D27 | Building the World's Most Advanced Mobile Network | SpaceX (company update) | 2026-10-08 | SpaceX primary. SpaceX announced an agreement to acquire a nationwide low-band licence portfolio of up to 14 megahertz of paired spectrum in the 800 MHz band, for Starlink Mobile coverage inside buildings; subject to final FCC approval. No price and no seller named. The page is client-side rendered and was read in a browser. Accessed 2026-10-09 | 2026-10-09 |
| D28 | Grain Management Announces Definitive Agreement to Sell Nationwide 800 MHz Spectrum Portfolio to SpaceX | Grain Management, LLC (seller's release) | 2026-10-08 | Seller's announcement. Definitive agreement dated 8 October 2026 under which SpaceX will acquire 100% of Grain's nationwide 800 MHz spectrum portfolio; subject to FCC approval and customary closing conditions; no price disclosed. Grain acquired the portfolio from T-Mobile in August 2026. Accessed 2026-10-09 | 2026-10-09 |
| S1 | List of Starship launches | Wikipedia | live, accessed 2026-09-06 | 13 integrated flights total; flight dates and outcomes; calendar-year counts 2/4/5/2; trailing-12-month count of 3 | 2026-09-07 |
| S27 | Starship Reaches Orbit on 14th Test Flight | Payload (Jacqueline Feldscher and Victoria Woodburn) | 2026-09-28 | Trade press. Starship reached orbit for the first time on Flight 14, 28 September 2026, its first operational mission, and deployed Starlink V3 satellites that join the constellation; the earlier V3 batch on Flight 13 was suborbital. Supports the sentence that one of three flights in the twelve months to 15 October 2026 reached orbit. Accessed 2026-10-09 | 2026-10-09 |
| S28 | SpaceX Starship Flight 14 live updates | Space.com | 2026-09-28 | Trade press. Flight 14 launched 28 September 2026; one Raptor 3 engine on the ship shut down early during ascent; all 26 Starlink V3 satellites were deployed; SpaceX returned the ship from orbit earlier than the planned ten-hour, six-orbit mission. Supports the R factor in the reasoning for entry 2026-09-003. Accessed 2026-10-11 | 2026-10-11 |
| S29 | Goodbye, Falcon 9: SpaceX planning to retire workhorse launcher when Starship is up and running | Space.com (Josh Dinner) | 2026-08-24 | Trade press. Quotes Musk's X post of 22 August 2026 setting the condition for winding down Falcon as Starship "flying reliably several times per week"; reports that SpaceX may discontinue all but a few Falcon 9 missions beginning in 2028. Supports the R and K factors for entry 2026-09-003. Accessed 2026-10-11 | 2026-10-11 |
| S30 | SpaceX has stopped taking Falcon 9 bookings past 2028, betting everything on Starship | TechSpot (Skye Jacobs) | 2026-09-24 | Secondary, single-source. Reports that SpaceX is no longer accepting Falcon 9 launch reservations beyond 2028; not confirmed by SpaceX. Supports the K factor for entry 2026-09-003, and is labelled as a single-source report there. Accessed 2026-10-11 | 2026-09-26 |
| S31 | SpaceX Starship Launch Price Set at $90 Million for 2029 Mission | IndexBox | 2026-03 | Secondary. A $90M price for one dedicated Starship launch on a 2029 mission, taken from a customer's annual filing. Cited in the reasoning for entry 2026-09-003 as not counted: a customer filing, per launch, not on spacex.com. Accessed 2026-10-11 | 2026-10-11 |
| C10 | SpaceX rideshare pricing API | SpaceX (live endpoint) | accessed 2026-10-11 | SpaceX primary. Re-read for entry 2026-09-003: $7,000/kg for 2026 on the same ladder as C7, ending at $7,500/kg in 2027; 50 kg minimum, so $350,000 entry; no mention of Starship. With the Starship and rideshare pages archived the same day, this is the baseline the entry is graded against | 2026-10-11 |
A note on source quality
SpaceX's own site is client-side rendered and returned no text to any automated retrieval during this run, so no SpaceX primary page was read for the flight history. The one flight-history figure this issue uses — three Starship flights in the trailing twelve months, all on planned suborbital trajectories — rests on Wikipedia's per-flight articles (S1), which are well cited but tertiary. The two SpaceX primary sources used here are the rideshare pricing feed (C7) and the Starship vehicle page (C9), both retrieved directly.
One standard, applied
Two figures were dropped from the draft rather than printed, and two are printed marked [UNVERIFIED]:
- Starship's circulated $10/kg and $100/kg targets. Not traceable to a verifiable primary source. Stated in the issue as unsourced rather than printed as a number.
- Falcon 9's reused marginal cost. The available figure traces to Musk via a secondary report of a May 2020 Aviation Week interview, which could not be retrieved. That is the same standard the issue applies to the Starship targets, so the row was cut from the table rather than kept with a weaker citation.
- Kuiper's launch share: 50–60% of a $16.5–20B programme. An analyst estimate (Quilty Space) that reached this issue only through a research summary; the underlying Quilty note was sought and not retrieved (sources-full D26). Printed marked
[UNVERIFIED]. - Falcon 9 rated capacity, lower bound of 17,500 kg. The 17,500 kg figure has no row here; the range is unverified pending the 8 October re-verification. SpaceX's own 2026 Capabilities & Services sheet, fetched 2026-09-13 (
evidence/sources/manifest.jsonl), gives 22,000 kg to LEO; the number in the issue is left as printed until that re-verification. The 57–74% utilisation arithmetic depends on it.
Conflict recorded, not resolved
| Conflict | Positions | Handling |
|---|---|---|
| Falcon 9 LEO payload capacity | SpaceX 22,800 kg (C1) vs FAA 13,150 kg (C5), on prices of $62M and $61.2M | Both printed. Yields $2,719/kg vs $4,654/kg — a 1.7× spread from the denominator alone. Not averaged |