The Falcon Heavy hasn't been flown yet, and changes in the final price of the launcher to a factor of 2 would not be surprising. The pricing points that Bill brought up are still valid. With a constant launch rate, the manufacturing cost of a reusable vehicle will be much higher than a disposable because of loss of learning curve benefits and fewer vehicles to spread production overhead to, so for the limiting case of 1 launch per vehicle, you lose quite a bit of cost performance. You have to increase launch rates, which isn't a certain thing and as Bill pointed out, you have to convince customers to fly on a used rocket, which also could be difficult depending on the customer. Accurate cost forecasting requires enough data to produce a trend, which for future vehicles, especially radically different future vehicles, is preciously hard to come by. On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 3:29 PM, Rand Simberg <simberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote: > List price for Falcon Heavy is already about a thousand dollars per pound, > completely expendable ($120M for 53 tons). Gwynne recently said that a > reusable Falcon 9 gets per-flight prices down to $5M-$7M. Even if > reusability cuts payload in half (it shouldn't be that bad), that's on the > order of a couple hundred bucks a pound. > > > On 2014-04-02 14:31, Bill Claybaugh wrote: > >> If you are going to make ridiculous assertions, please provide the >> math to prove them. Even SpaceX says rocket back will not get below >> $1000 per pound, and that takes hundreds of launches per reusable >> stage. >> >> If you are not going to provide proof of your silly claims, please >> stop making them. >> >> Bill >> >> Sent from my iPhone >> >> On Apr 2, 2014, at 14:00, marsbeyond@xxxxxxxxx wrote: >> >> It uses only 30% of PAYLOAD. Listen to Gwynne Shotwell's most recent >>> interview on "The Space Show" very carefully. For what purpose would you >>> ever fly it up range? Just land on a barge or land downrange. Actually $80 >>> per pound is doable. >>> >>> Sent from my iPhone >>> >>> On Apr 2, 2014, at 12:53 PM, Bill Claybaugh <wclaybaugh2@xxxxxxxxxx> >>> wrote: >>> >>> Please. >>>> >>>> Landing the first stage downrange uses 15% of the payload; flying it >>>> back up range cost 30% of payload. Even if refurbishing and relaunch were >>>> free, propulsive fly back will take four launches just to cost the same as >>>> expending. Since they are not free, it is more likely to take something >>>> between 12-24 launches for this system to cost exactly the same as the >>>> expendable version. >>>> >>>> This also means that production rates will drop and so those cost will >>>> go up. >>>> >>>> And then there's the customers who want to know why they should fly on >>>> a used rocket.... >>>> >>>> $100 per pound is not achievable with this system. >>>> >>>> Bill >>>> >>>> Sent from my iPhone >>>> >>>> On Apr 2, 2014, at 10:49, marsbeyond@xxxxxxxxx wrote: >>>> >>>> Kieth, >>>>> >>>>> When is Skylon supposed to fly? In less than two years, SpaceX will be >>>>> using propulsive recovery to re-use the first stage, second stage, and >>>>> capsule, and their cost to LEO will drop to $100 a pound! >>>>> >>>>> Sent from my iPhone >>>>> >>>>> On Apr 2, 2014, at 9:27 AM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson@xxxxxxxxx> >>>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> http://theenergycollective.com/keith-henson/362181/ >>>>>> dollar-gallon-gasoline >>>>>> >>>>>> $350 million committed so far to the Skylon engines. >>>>>> >>>>>> Keith >>>>>> >>>>> >>> >