Mass to low Earth orbit is sold for less than two hundred dollars a kilogram

Today's price for a full flight runs a few thousand dollars per kilogram. Two hundred, in 2026 dollars, is roughly the point at which a tonne to orbit costs two hundred thousand dollars, the price of a house rather than of a satellite programme, and building large things in space becomes a question of will rather than money. Reusable heavy launchers flying often are the only known route there.

The test: what counts as it having happened

A launch provider sells, by public price list or a signed contract made public, a full manifest to low Earth orbit at two hundred dollars or less per kilogram, in 2026 dollars by the US consumer price index, price meaning the full launch-service charge divided by the contracted payload mass to low Earth orbit.

Settled by: The provider's published price list or a public contract record

The odds, by how long I live

baselineto 2071 ± 8	moderateto 2080	strongto 2095	radicalto 2136	openno deadline
60%	72%	83%	91%	94%

Each column is a different guess at how long I live, from current trends (baseline) to open-ended. The number is the chance this happens before that deadline, assuming everything it depends on happens first. As of September 19th, 2026.

Why these numbers: Flight rate is the mechanism, but a public sold price is a demand-and-competition question: a hundred flights a year says nothing about utilisation, refurbishment cost or competition, and a single provider can hold price above cost for years. Two of three outside reviewers said lower than the first estimate (Astra and Grok against Gemini, September 19th, 2026); moved partway toward them. The earlier comparison to Astra's unconditional hundred-dollar figure is dropped as a different question.

What this one is worth

If this happened tomorrow and nothing else changed, the chance that I live and work off Earth by 2071 goes from 0.5% to 0.6% (+0.1 points). If it turned out no, the same number goes to 0.0% (−0.5 points).

Longevity scenario	baseline2071 ± 8	moderate2080	strong2095	radical2136	openno deadline
The headline as it stands	0.5%	1.2%	3.8%	11%	15%
If this settled yes now	0.6%	1.5%	3.9%	11%	16%
If this settled no now	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%

This is what the site says in advance, before the thing happens. When it does, the ledger entry that records it quotes this figure beside what actually followed, so a reader can see whether the prediction held. Worked out at the run 2026-10-11-scan by holding this step at each outcome in turn and playing the whole tree out again, 20,000 times per scenario. That is a throw of the dice, so a move smaller than about 0.10 points is inside the noise rather than a finding.

What the ledger says about this step

The odds that mass to orbit sells below two hundred dollars a kilogram, given a hundred flights a year, came down after two of three reviewers said cadence proves nothing about price 2026-09-20 Changed my mind

The last 3 checks

Once a week the tree is read against the news, node by node, against the test above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every check ever made on this node is on the Radar page.

2026-11-01 Nothing new

The only public Starship price point is a $90 million flight disclosed in a Voyager 10-K in March 2026 (about $600 to $900 per kg), outside the window and above the threshold. Falcon 9 is about $2,700 to $3,300 per kg, and no price list at or below $200 per kg was found.
2026-10-04 Nothing new

The only public Starship contract price found is the 90 million dollar figure from a Voyager Technologies filing, about 600 dollars per kg at 150 tonnes; Musk's July 29th, 2026 sub-100-dollar claim is a target, not a sold price, and both predate the window.
2026-09-19 Nothing new

No published price list or signed public contract at 200 dollars per kilogram or less appeared in the five-week window; market trackers still put actual launch costs around 2,700 to 3,000 dollars per kilogram for most providers.

Revisions

Date	Field	From	To	Why
2026-09-19	resolution	'two hundred 2026 dollars or less per kilogram of payload', index and price definition unstated	in 2026 dollars by the US consumer price index, price meaning the full launch-service charge divided by contracted payload mass to low Earth orbit; price list or contract kept	Step 27 outside-model review, item 58 (docs/reviews/2026-09-19-rulings.md): naming the index and the price definition costs nothing; a completed-sale requirement was declined as adding little. Decided September 19th, 2026.
2026-09-19	description	'a tonne to orbit costs less than a mid-range car'	a tonne to orbit costs two hundred thousand dollars	Step 27 outside-model review, item 58: the arithmetic was wrong (a tonne at $200/kg is $200,000). Decided September 19th, 2026.
2026-09-19	probability	0.70 / 0.80 / 0.88 / 0.93 / 0.95	0.60 / 0.72 / 0.83 / 0.91 / 0.94	Step 27 outside-model review, items 17, 59 and 103 (docs/reviews/2026-09-19-rulings.md): Gemini argued up (oversupply forces price down), Astra argued down (cadence proves nothing about cost), and Grok in Fast mode broke the tie toward Astra; moved partway, discounting Fast mode. Rationale's arithmetic fixed. Decided September 19th, 2026.

Think this estimate is wrong? Here's how to tell me, and what happens next. The record itself is data/L-launch.toml in the public repository.