Starship’s Commercial Moment: What Operational Starship Flights Would Do to Launch Economics

Key Takeaways

• The FAA authorized 25 Starship launches per year from Starbase in May 2025, and SpaceX fired up its next-generation V3 Starship engine for the first time in early 2026 ahead of Starlink V3 payload missions
• At verified operational cadence, Starship’s 150-metric-ton payload capacity and target cost structure below $100 per kilogram would reduce the cost-per-kilogram benchmark by roughly 97 percent compared to early Falcon 9 pricing and compress the competitive gap between SpaceX and every other launch provider
• The commercial impact of Starship is asymmetric across market segments: it is transformative for megaconstellation operators who can fill the fairing, disruptive for medium-lift competitors, and largely irrelevant for the small satellite rideshare market it was not designed to serve

The Vehicle That Has Not Yet Launched Commercially

Every analysis of Starship’s commercial impact begins with the same caveat: the vehicle has not flown a commercial payload mission. Eight test flights have demonstrated the vehicle’s flight profile to increasing levels of success, the Super Heavy booster’s catch by the launch tower’s mechanical arms has become a routine demonstration, and SpaceX’s engine qualification program has progressed to the point where V3 Starship hardware was being prepared for its first static fire test in early 2026. The FAA authorized 25 Starship launches per year from Boca Chica in May 2025, a fivefold increase from the previous five-per-year limit. The physical and regulatory prerequisites for an operational Starship launch program are closer to completion than at any previous point.

But a vehicle that has launched test payloads and internal Starlink satellites is not an operational commercial launch vehicle. The commercial market needs demonstrated reliability across multiple missions with paying customers before it can structure business plans around Starship’s performance. It needs verified cost data rather than projected cost structures. It needs mission assurance processes that the insurance market can evaluate. And it needs regulatory certainty around licensing, range scheduling, and launch frequency that still involves iterative FAA review of each mission profile change.

The commercial space economy’s analytical task in 2026 is not to determine whether Starship will eventually be transformative. The physics and economics are clear enough that this question has an obvious answer. The analytical task is to assess when the transition from test program to operational vehicle happens, which market segments feel the impact first, what the competitive and pricing consequences look like across the launch industry, and what the downstream effects are for satellite manufacturing, constellation design, and the businesses that depend on launch cost as a fundamental input.

This article examines that transition, its pace, the commercial segments it affects, and what verified Starship economics would actually mean for the space economy’s cost structure.

What Starship Is and What It Is Not

Starship is a fully reusable two-stage launch system with a target payload capacity of 100 to 150 metric tons to low Earth orbit, depending on mission profile and the extent of propellant transfer required for higher orbits. Super Heavy, the first stage, uses 33 Raptor engines burning liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Starship, the second stage and spacecraft, uses six Raptor engines in vacuum-optimized and sea-level configurations. Both stages are designed for full reuse: Super Heavy returns to the launch tower for mechanical catch by the “Mechazilla” arms, and Starship returns to a separate landing infrastructure or an offshore platform.

The vehicle’s most commercially relevant specification is its payload fairing diameter of 9 meters, compared to Falcon 9’s 5.2-meter fairing and Falcon Heavy’s 5.2-meter fairing. A 9-meter fairing can accommodate satellite designs that would require folded deployment configurations on any currently operational launch vehicle, eliminating the design constraints that have shaped every commercial satellite’s form factor for the past three decades. The James Webb Space Telescope required a precisely engineered unfolding sequence because no existing fairing was large enough to carry it in fully deployed configuration. A Starship fairing eliminates that constraint for subsequent large space telescope missions and for commercial payloads that have been artificially size-constrained by available launch vehicles.

Starship is not, and does not aspire to be, a vehicle for small satellite rideshare. SpaceX’s own Transporter rideshare program uses Falcon 9. A customer with 200 kilograms of satellite payload has no use for a Starship fairing that can carry 150 metric tons. The minimum commercially rational payload for Starship is a large constellation batch deployment, a large individual spacecraft, or a government mission that requires the combination of payload mass and volume that no other vehicle provides. The rideshare market that has grown substantially from 2019 through 2025 on Falcon 9 and Rocket Lab Electron will not migrate to Starship. It will remain on those vehicles or migrate to Rocket Lab Neutron, Terran R, and other medium-lift commercial vehicles as they enter service.

The Cost Structure: What the Numbers Actually Suggest

Elon Musk has stated a long-term target of $10 million per Starship launch and has discussed target cost-per-kilogram figures in the single digits at high flight rates. These are aspirational figures for a fully mature program at high cadence, not projections for 2026 or 2027 operational missions. The commercially relevant cost question for the near term is what Starship costs at the cadence and reuse rates achievable in its first years of operational service.

Working from publicly available information on Raptor engine production costs, vehicle manufacturing, propellant (liquid methane and liquid oxygen at scale), ground operations, and recovery infrastructure, analysts have modeled initial Starship operational costs at approximately $15 million to $30 million per launch in the near-term operational phase with booster reuse but Starship upper stage recovery still being validated at high reuse rates. At 150 metric tons of payload and a $25 million launch cost, the cost per kilogram would be approximately $167. At the optimistic $15 million cost with 150-ton payload, cost per kilogram falls to approximately $100.

Falcon 9 delivers approximately 17.5 metric tons to LEO at a commercial list price of approximately $67 million, producing a nominal $3,830 per kilogram. In practice, customers who fill only a fraction of that capacity pay substantially more per kilogram on average; Payload Space research found that dedicated commercial Falcon 9 missions average only 3,370 kilograms of payload, producing an effective $20,000 per kilogram for the typical customer. The constellation operators who fill Falcon 9’s capacity efficiently, most notably SpaceX for its own Starlink program, do achieve costs approaching the nominal per-kilogram figure, but even that is 20 to 40 times higher than Starship’s near-term target.

The cost comparison that matters commercially is not Starship versus Falcon 9 in isolation. It is Starship’s per-kilogram cost versus the fully loaded cost of satellite design, manufacturing, insurance, and operations that constellation operators calculate when deciding how to build and price their services. For a constellation operator currently deploying satellites on Falcon 9 rideshare at $6,000 per kilogram, a Starship rate of $150 to $300 per kilogram reduces launch cost by 95 to 98 percent. Launch cost for a typical LEO broadband satellite might represent 20 to 30 percent of total mission cost; a 95 percent reduction in launch cost reduces total mission cost by 19 to 28 percent, which is a significant but not unlimited competitive advantage. The satellite manufacturing cost, software development, ground segment, and operational costs are largely unchanged by the launch vehicle choice.

The Starlink V3 Mission: First Operational Commercial Signal

SpaceX’s own Starlink V3 satellite constellation will be Starship’s first sustained operational payload customer, which is simultaneously good news and analytically limiting. Good news because the world’s most sophisticated satellite constellation operator is committed to Starship as its deployment vehicle, which provides the launch cadence that drives down per-unit costs and generates the operational experience that enables commercial customer confidence. Analytically limiting because SpaceX is deploying Starship internally, which means the pricing and cost signals from Starlink V3 missions are not visible to commercial satellite operators trying to benchmark Starship economics against alternatives.

Starlink V3 satellites are designed around Starship’s capabilities. Each satellite is expected to deliver approximately 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity, compared to roughly 100 gigabits per second for V2 Mini satellites currently deploying on Falcon 9. A single Starship launch deploying 50 to 100 V3 satellites adds 50 to 100 terabits per second of capacity to the Starlink constellation. The network capacity implications are substantial: SpaceX has described weekly Starship cadence as a target, which at 50+ satellites per mission would add more than 2,500 terabits of new Starlink capacity per year, increasing the constellation’s aggregate throughput by a factor of several times from its current level.

The SpaceX static fire test of V3 Starship hardware in early 2026 and preparation for V3 Starlink payload missions confirms that the program is progressing toward operational deployment. The specific launch date for the first V3 Starlink batch has not been formally announced as of March 2026, but the infrastructure at Starbase, including the Mechazilla tower catch system and the V3 Starship hardware integration program, is visibly advancing.

The First External Commercial Customers and What They Signal

Beyond Starlink, the commercial payload customers that have publicly committed to Starship are a specific profile: large payloads or moon-surface delivery that no alternative vehicle can accommodate.

Astrolab’s FLEX lunar rover, which holds approximately $160 million in contracts, has partnered with SpaceX for delivery to the Moon’s south polar region aboard Starship. The mission is targeted for mid-2026 and represents SpaceX’s first commercial contract for lunar cargo delivery. The FLEX rover’s dimensions and mass requirements align with Starship’s deep-space payload delivery capability. No currently operational alternative provides lunar surface delivery for a rover of FLEX’s scale.

NASA’s Artemis program is the most consequential Starship customer, with the Human Landing System contract requiring Starship to deliver crew from near-lunar orbit to the lunar surface and return them. The Artemis III restructuring, which converted the lunar landing mission into an LEO docking demonstration, has shifted the timeline but not the fundamental contract. NASA’s financial commitment to Starship as the lunar lander is the largest government anchor in any commercial launch program in history.

The commercial satellite market has been slower to commit. The problem is predictable: satellite operators building business plans around Starship need reliability data, pricing data, and insurance coverage that only operational flights can generate. A constellation operator willing to deploy 200 satellites on a single Starship mission is accepting significant concentration risk: if the mission fails, 200 satellites are lost. Falcon 9’s smaller payload capacity creates natural mission segmentation: the loss of one Falcon 9 rideshare mission loses one batch of satellites, not the entire constellation. Risk-averse operators and their insurers have legitimate reasons to wait for multiple successful Starship commercial missions before committing major constellation deployments.

The commercial case for Starship accelerates nonlinearly once the first several commercial missions succeed. The first verified loss-free commercial Starship mission provides actuarial data for insurers. The second builds the record. By the fifth or tenth commercial mission, the reliability database supports commercial constellation deployment planning at a confidence level that the current test flight record does not provide. The market transition from Falcon 9 to Starship for large constellation deployments is therefore likely to be sudden rather than gradual once the reliability threshold is crossed, because the economics at that point strongly favor Starship and the risk objection has been answered.

What Starship Does to the Competitive Launch Market

The medium and heavy-lift launch market’s competitive dynamics in 2026 are defined by the absence of operational Starship rather than its presence. Falcon 9 holds approximately 60 to 70 percent of commercial launch market share by revenue. New Glenn, Blue Origin’s heavy-lift reusable rocket, has flown its initial missions and is developing its commercial manifest. ULA’s Vulcan Centaur has encountered issues with its RL10 engines that have delayed its planned launch cadence significantly. Ariane 6, Europe’s new heavy-lift vehicle, is operating but not yet at competitive pricing with Falcon 9. Rocket Lab’s Neutron medium-lift vehicle is targeting first flight in 2026.

An operational Starship at 25 flights per year would not directly affect most of these vehicles’ near-term customer base. Ariane 6 and Vulcan Centaur serve national and institutional customers with sovereign launch requirements, for whom the launch vehicle choice is partly a matter of industrial policy rather than purely cost optimization. Rocket Lab Neutron and other medium-lift vehicles serve the market between rideshare and dedicated heavy-lift, where payloads are too large for Transporter rideshare but too small to fill Starship’s fairing. New Glenn competes for large commercial GEO satellites where Starship’s fairing dimensions are not necessary and where Blue Origin’s relationship with Amazon provides a captive customer for Kuiper constellation deployments.

The competitive impact of Starship falls most heavily on the large commercial GEO satellite market, specifically the contracts that Arianespace, ULA, and historically Falcon Heavy have competed for. A large GEO communications satellite might mass 6 to 8 metric tons at launch. Starship can carry 20 such satellites in a single launch, or carry one satellite to GEO transfer orbit with enough margin to offer premium delivery terms. If SpaceX prices Starship GEO delivery at $20 to $30 million per satellite, it undercuts every alternative by 50 to 70 percent for a mission type that Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy have not dominated primarily because of price. The GEO satellite launch market for commercial operators would shift rapidly toward Starship at those price points.

The medium-lift reusable rocket market, including Rocket Lab Neutron, Relativity Terran R, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Isar Aerospace, is largely insulated from Starship in the near term because its customer base consists of operators with payloads that neither need Starship’s capacity nor justify its minimum economic batch size. But as Starship drives down the price floor for large constellation deployments, it creates competitive pressure on constellation business models that use medium-lift vehicles, because operators who can access Starship economics will have lower launch cost inputs than competitors using medium-lift alternatives. The secondary competitive effect of Starship on the medium-lift market is indirect but real.

Satellite Manufacturing Implications: The Form Factor Liberation

The most underappreciated commercial consequence of operational Starship is not its effect on launch pricing. It is its effect on satellite design. Every satellite in the current commercial fleet was designed with the assumption that it must fit within a fairing diameter of 5.2 meters, operate on the propellant it can carry at launch, and survive the specific acoustic and vibration environment of its launch vehicle. These constraints have shaped satellite mass, dimensions, power systems, and thermal management for three decades.

A 9-meter Starship fairing eliminates the diameter constraint. A satellite that previously required a precisely engineered folded solar array configuration because it was too wide for a 5-meter fairing can now fly with a simpler, structurally more reliable unfolded configuration. Solar arrays that limited GEO communications satellite power output because of deployment complexity can be designed for larger area without the constraint. Telescope mirrors that required segmented designs because monolithic mirrors would not fit can potentially fly as larger, optically simpler monoliths.

The propellant constraint changes as SpaceX develops Starship’s on-orbit refueling capability. A satellite that launches with minimal propellant, relying on Starship-delivered fuel depots for its station-keeping budget, can allocate the mass previously consumed by propellant tanks to payload capacity instead. This design freedom is not available in 2026, but the physics of propellant depot refueling that Starship is designed to eventually enable would allow spacecraft designers to trade propellant mass for payload mass in ways that are currently impossible.

The acoustic and vibration environment of Starship is different from Falcon 9’s, and satellite designs certified for Falcon 9 are not automatically certified for Starship. The transition from a verified Falcon 9 mission heritage to Starship requires new qualification testing, which adds cost and time to the first generation of satellites designed for Starship deployment. The qualification cost is a one-time investment that subsequent satellite generations benefit from, but it represents a real transitional cost that operators planning near-term Starship deployments must absorb.

The Propellant Transfer Problem

Starship’s full commercial potential for deep-space missions depends on a capability that has not yet been demonstrated at operational scale: on-orbit propellant transfer. To reach the Moon or Mars with a meaningful payload, Starship needs to refuel in LEO from a propellant tanker, because the combined fuel load required for the full mission exceeds what a single launch can carry. The tanker is itself a Starship variant that delivers only propellant to orbit, transfers it to the payload-carrying Starship, and returns for reuse.

On-orbit propellant transfer is technically demanding; cryogenic liquids in microgravity behave differently from the same fluids in pressurized ground storage, and the process has not been demonstrated at the scale Starship requires. SpaceX has conducted preliminary tests of cryogenic propellant management in microgravity on smaller platforms, but the full transfer operation between two Starship-class vehicles has not occurred in flight. The Artemis III HLS docking demonstration in LEO, now assigned as the primary mission for Artemis III, provides some data on the vehicle behavior required for that operation, but it is not a propellant transfer demonstration.

The propellant transfer requirement creates a specific development dependency: commercial customers planning lunar or deep-space missions via Starship need that technology to be demonstrated and operationally reliable before they can schedule payloads. The cislunar economy that investors and operators are building business plans around, covering lunar resource extraction, permanent lunar habitation, and interplanetary cargo delivery, requires propellant transfer to be as reliable as any other spacecraft operation. It is not currently demonstrated to that level, which is the most specific technical gap between Starship’s current state and its full commercial potential.

The Timeline Problem: When Does Commercial Starship Actually Arrive?

The transition from test program to commercial launch vehicle is not determined by technical readiness alone. It requires insurance market acceptance, regulatory streamlining sufficient to allow launch-on-demand scheduling rather than mission-by-mission FAA license reviews, satellite operator willingness to commit manifests to an operationally unverified vehicle, and range access at cadence that the national security launch program does not preempt.

The insurance market dimension is the most binding near-term constraint. A commercial satellite operator who places $300 million worth of satellites on a single Starship launch is asking its insurers to cover a concentration risk that has no precedent in the launch insurance market. Insurers will require multiple successful commercial Starship missions before offering coverage terms that make the economics of a full Starship batch deployment viable for operators who carry insurance. Self-insuring operators like SpaceX can move first; operators who must purchase coverage will follow once the actuarial record exists.

The regulatory streamlining dimension is being addressed through the Trump administration’s acquisition reform directives and the FAA’s 25-launch authorization, but individual mission license modifications still take weeks to months. SpaceX is working to establish a standard mission license that covers all launches within defined parameters rather than requiring per-mission review, which would enable the operational cadence that commercial customers need to schedule manifests reliably. The FAA’s current review process was designed for infrequent experimental flights and has not been restructured for the weekly-or-faster cadence that an operational Starship program would require.

The most realistic commercial Starship scenario through 2027 is: Starlink V3 missions proceed on an internal SpaceX schedule throughout 2026, with the first V3 batch missions validating the operational vehicle profile. By late 2026 or early 2027, the first non-Starlink commercial payload customer executes a verified mission with published results. Insurance market acceptance begins building. By 2027-2028, commercial constellation operators begin manifesting large batch deployments. The pricing pressure on Falcon 9 for large-batch LEO constellation missions becomes visible in commercial negotiations, and the medium-lift market starts pricing in Starship competition for operators who can fill its volume.

Summary

Starship’s commercial moment is approaching but has not arrived as of March 2026. The FAA authorized 25 launches per year from Boca Chica in May 2025. V3 Starship hardware has completed initial testing. Starlink V3 payload missions are the next operational milestone. The physics and economics of the vehicle, with 150-metric-ton payload, target cost below $100 per kilogram, and a 9-meter fairing diameter, are transformative for the segments of the launch market it is designed to serve.

The commercial impact of operational Starship is segmented, not uniform. Large constellation operators who can fill its fairing gain a cost reduction of 95 to 98 percent versus current alternatives, reducing total mission cost by 20 to 30 percent. GEO satellite operators gain access to pricing that would undercut every alternative by 50 to 70 percent for large satellites. Satellite designers gain access to form factors that current fairings prohibit. The medium-lift market is largely insulated in the near term but faces indirect competitive pressure as Starship economics reshape the cost structures of operators who compete against Starship-enabled constellations.

The transition from test program to operational commercial vehicle requires insurance market acceptance, verified reliability across multiple commercial missions, and regulatory streamlining that is in progress but incomplete. The commercial adoption curve is not linear with the launch cadence; it follows the verification events that satisfy the insurance, financial planning, and regulatory requirements that govern commercial satellite programs. The first five commercial missions will matter more to the market’s adoption trajectory than the five hundred missions that follow them.

For readers building context on Starship’s development and SpaceX’s commercial strategy, Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger provides essential historical context on how SpaceX navigated from the brink of failure to commercial launch dominance. For the launch economics analysis framework, The Space Economy by Chad Anderson connects launch cost reduction to the downstream market opportunities that Starship’s economics would unlock.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Starship’s payload capacity and how does it compare to Falcon 9?

Starship is designed to deliver 100 to 150 metric tons to low Earth orbit in its fully reusable configuration, compared to Falcon 9’s 17.5 metric tons. The payload fairing diameter of 9 meters versus Falcon 9’s 5.2 meters allows satellites too large to fit in any current operational fairing to launch without folded deployment configurations. At maximum payload capacity and a target launch cost below $30 million, Starship targets a cost per kilogram below $200, compared to Falcon 9’s nominal $3,830 per kilogram at full capacity or approximately $20,000 per kilogram at the average real-world capacity utilization of commercial dedicated missions.

What has the FAA authorized for Starship and what restrictions remain?

The FAA authorized SpaceX to launch Starship up to 25 times per year from Boca Chica, Texas in May 2025, up from the previous five-per-year limit. The authorization includes up to 25 annual Super Heavy booster landings and 25 Starship second-stage landings, with up to three launches permitted during nighttime hours. Individual mission profiles that deviate from the standard flight parameters still require license modifications, and SpaceX is working toward a standard license framework that covers a broader range of operations without mission-by-mission FAA review.

Who are Starship’s confirmed commercial customers beyond SpaceX Starlink?

Astrolab has partnered with SpaceX to deliver its FLEX lunar rover to the Moon’s south polar region on Starship, targeted for mid-2026. NASA holds the largest commercial commitment through the Human Landing System contract for Artemis missions. Commercial satellite constellation operators have not publicly committed large manifest deployments as of March 2026, with the primary constraint being the absence of a verified reliability record sufficient for insurance purposes and financial planning for missions with $100 million or more of satellites on a single vehicle.

What is Starlink V3 and how does it relate to Starship?

Starlink V3 is the next generation of SpaceX’s satellite internet constellation, designed around Starship’s capabilities. Each V3 satellite is expected to deliver approximately 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity, roughly ten times the capacity of current V2 Mini satellites, which are deployed on Falcon 9. Starship can carry 50 to 100 V3 satellites per mission, making each launch ten to twenty times more capacity-efficient than a Falcon 9 Starlink mission. V3 hardware was undergoing static fire qualification testing in early 2026.

What is the propellant transfer problem and why does it matter commercially?

Starship’s full capability for deep-space missions, including the Moon and Mars, depends on on-orbit propellant transfer from a dedicated tanker variant to the payload-carrying vehicle in LEO. This transfer refuels Starship with enough propellant for the full mission without requiring a prohibitively large initial propellant load at launch. On-orbit transfer of cryogenic propellants in microgravity has not been demonstrated at Starship scale. Operators planning cislunar commercial missions via Starship must wait for this capability to be demonstrated and operationally reliable before scheduling payloads, which is the most specific technical gap between Starship’s current state and its full commercial potential.

Why hasn’t the commercial satellite market committed to Starship yet?

Commercial satellite operators face three constraints on Starship commitments: insurance, risk concentration, and reliability data. A single Starship mission with $200 million to $300 million in satellites represents a loss concentration risk that has no precedent in launch history, and insurers require a verified reliability record before offering coverage terms that make such deployments viable. The risk concentration problem, specifically losing an entire constellation batch in a single launch failure, is particularly acute for operators who depend on continuous service to customers. Finally, business plans require cost certainty that only a history of commercially executed missions can provide, not engineering projections.

Which market segments will be most disrupted by operational Starship?

The large commercial GEO satellite launch market faces the most direct pricing disruption, as Starship can deliver large GEO satellites at significantly lower cost than Ariane 6, Vulcan Centaur, or Falcon Heavy. The large LEO constellation batch deployment market, where SpaceX, Amazon, and others need to efficiently deploy hundreds of satellites per year, gains cost reductions of 95 percent or more versus current alternatives. The market least affected is the small satellite rideshare segment, which Starship was not designed to serve and where Falcon 9 Transporter, Electron, and emerging medium-lift vehicles will continue to dominate.

How does Starship’s 9-meter fairing change satellite design?

The 9-meter fairing eliminates the diameter constraint that has shaped every commercial satellite’s form factor for three decades. Satellites requiring precisely engineered folded solar array or antenna deployment configurations because they would not fit in a 5-meter fairing can now be designed for simpler, structurally more reliable unfolded configurations. Large telescopes that required segmented mirror designs to fit within existing fairings can potentially fly with larger monolithic mirrors. The design freedom extends to mass as well: a satellite freed from mass-constrained propulsion designs can reallocate that mass to payload capacity. These benefits accrue as satellite programs are redesigned for Starship; satellites already designed for Falcon 9 would require new qualification testing to fly on Starship.

What is the realistic commercial Starship timeline through 2028?

The most likely scenario has Starlink V3 missions proceeding as internal SpaceX operations throughout 2026, validating the vehicle’s operational profile. The first non-Starlink commercial payload mission likely occurs in late 2026 or early 2027, building the reliability record that insurance underwriters and commercial operators need. Insurance market acceptance builds through 2027 as additional commercial missions succeed. Large commercial constellation batch deployments begin manifesting in 2027 to 2028, with the pricing pressure on Falcon 9 for large LEO constellation missions becoming visible in commercial launch negotiations during that period.

What does Starship mean for competing launch vehicles?

The competitive impact falls asymmetrically across the launch market. For Ariane 6 and Vulcan Centaur, which serve sovereign and institutional customers with non-price-optimized procurement, the impact is delayed by political and industrial policy factors. For New Glenn, which serves the large commercial GEO market and Amazon’s Kuiper constellation, the pricing pressure from Starship creates a long-term competitive challenge that Blue Origin’s internal relationship with Kuiper partially insulates it from. For medium-lift vehicles like Rocket Lab Neutron, the direct competitive impact is limited because the payloads they serve are too small for Starship, though indirect competitive pressure builds as operators using Starship have lower cost structures than competitors using medium-lift alternatives.