The development costs of the competing Space launch system have been about $40 billion. The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket cost will be about $4 billion while ignoring most of the development costs. Each SpaceX Super Heavy Starship will cost about $40 million. Before considering the full reusability of SpaceX Super Heavy Starship will cost one thousand times less than SLS. Full reusability will drive the cost down to $2 million or less for each SpaceX Super Heavy Starship launch. This means two thousand SpaceX Super Heavy Starship launches for the price of one SLS launch.

Elon says SpaceX plans to build one Starship a week by the end of 2020. SpaceX is designing its factory to build one Starship every 3 days (72 hours). The three-day build target would be by the end of 2021.