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Re:SpaceX successfully lands its sixth Falcon 9 rocket after... by grey-area on Sunday August 14, 2016 @10:33AM (#12285712)
Costs per launch include fuel (trivial at < $0.5m), rocket (say $30-40m of which first stage is 3/4) and recurring costs like employee time, refurbishment, test fires, barge rental, range costs etc (significant maybe 5-10m?). Musk is prone to talking about the far future as if it were tomorrow and within our grasp today. If you count medium term as 3-5 years (I'd call that short term), there is no way they're getting an order of magnitude saving.

They charge $60m, so it's unlikely ever to come down below 20m without 2nd stage reuse, and say around 5-10m even with full re-use in a few decades. Best case they could probably get it down to 10% of current costs (90% saving) if they manage full re-use and cut down on recurring costs a lot, but for now 30% is pretty impressive.

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