Falcon 9 Block 5

Seventy metres on a 3.7 metre core, nine Merlins making 7,607 kilonewtons at sea level, and 22,800 kilograms to low orbit. That payload figure is the expendable case, which matters, because SpaceX publishes no number at all for the profile it actually flies. Commonly cited droneship figures fall between 17.4 and 18.5 tonnes, so recovery costs roughly a fifth of the performance.

It costs that on every single flight. Legs, grid fins, a thicker interstage and reserved landing propellant ride to staging whether the booster comes home or not. Falcon 9 is a rocket permanently carrying the weight of its own return ticket, and the reason that is the right trade is volume rather than elegance.

The volume is the argument. As of 6 September 2026 the vehicle has flown 683 times, landed 636 boosters and reflown 602 of them. The overwhelming majority of Falcon 9 flights now ride used hardware, and individual boosters have gone as many as thirty-seven times. Nobody else in the industry has a second data point.

The one price SpaceX publishes as a price, rather than an estimate, is the rideshare rate: 350,000 dollars for 50 kilograms to sun-synchronous orbit and 7,000 dollars per kilogram above that. It is not the same as a dedicated launch cost and it should not be quoted as one, but it is a real number a real customer can buy, which is more than most of this industry offers.

What it displaced is not subtle. The commercial geostationary market that Ariane 5 had held, and the American national security work that ran on Atlas V and Delta IV, both moved. The incumbents were pricing per airframe against a company amortising per booster, and that is an argument you lose slowly and then all at once.