Carlo CocuzziAI Expert, Pod Cast Host, Real Estate Investor and Funding Specialist

This Will Enable Us to Go to Space | MOONSHOTS

3 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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1:15

A former Space Adventures co-founder explains how space tourism prices have climbed from $20 million to $75 million for Soyuz flights, while SpaceX's Starship aims for $20 million. He calculates that an electric winch system lifting someone to orbit would cost about $200 in electricity, suggesting a path toward making space travel affordable for ordinary people.

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It will ultimately enable all of us to go to space. Years ago, I was co-founder of something called Space Adventures and sold tickets on Soyuz to go to space. The first ticket was $20 million. The prices rose quickly to about $75 million as the price of labor in Russia went up. And Philip this morning was saying that on the Starship, he's going to be offering flights to orbit. The price is going to come down to $20 million a flight. Alex, I think you'll appreciate this. I did the calculations on if you could electrically winch somebody from the Earth up to orbit, mg— by a space elevator, mgh, right? Potential energy. And then accelerate them electrically to orbital velocity. And if you could buy that off of the grid at 7 cents a kilowatt hour, the price of launching you and your spacesuit into orbit drops from $20 million down to $200. $200 bucks. $200 of electrical cost to winch you and accelerate you to orbital velocity. All right? So Mgh, 1/2 mv², go to your favorite large language model, plug in those numbers, plug in your weight, add 100 kilograms for a spacesuit, you get the same numbers there. There's a price improvement curve that's going to be hitting and it will ultimately enable all of us to go to space.