How much would it have cost to put the Horizon Broadcast Satellite into orbit?
As we see at the start of the game, the Horizon Broadcast Satellite is launched into orbit from the Irokawa Space Center. But how much would this actually cost the people who run the Horizon Festival?
Well, the rocket the satellite launches on appears to be based on the H-IIB, which is retired, but if we assume that this actually is an H-IIB, we can infer that the launch cost would be approximately $112.5 million per mission.
Now onto the satellite itself. We never actually get a good look at it, so I’ll estimate that the satellite has the same mass as the average geostationary orbit communication satellite, which typically weigh between 3000 and 6500kg (or 6,613.868lbs to 14330.05lbs). For the sake of calculations, I’ll go in the middle and assume the satellite has a mass of 4,750kg (or 10,471.957 lbs).
The average cost of launching a kilogram of payload into orbit is around $10,000 to $25,000 per kilogram. Once again, for the sake of calculations, I’ll go right in the middle and use $17,500 per kilogram.
From this, we can infer that the total cost of placing the Horizon Broadcast Satellite into obit is (17,500 X 4750 = 83,125,000) $83,125,000.