William> Since it is unlikely recovery and refurbishment cost nothing
William> (the drone ship has operating costs and depreciation; once
William> landed the vehicles require moving back to the processing
William> facility where something must occur to make them certifiably
William> ready for the next launch); and since there is no data on
William> what those costs might be, we can at best conclude that reuse
William> may be generating free cash flow but if so, that benefit is
William> being retained by the company rather than passed on to
William> customers as still lower prices.
But the customers are getting a benefit, of having a slightly lower
price for the 2 through N launches, and then the knowledge they're
getting a flight tested unit. Isn't that worth something to the
customer as well?
I would think that maybe insurance costs would go down for launches on
proven hardware, and might even go down more now that F9 has shown it
can handle an engine failure and still complete the mission.
There's a bunch of costs and assumptions here, and I don't see how an
ELV can really beat an RLV in the long run. As others have said, we
don't toss away planes at the end of trips if we can help it, since it
costs so much.
From a customer's point of view, how much savings do you need on
launch costs to make an RLV a better choice over an ELV? $1? $10k?
$100k? 1, 5 or 10 million?
And of course the internal savings don't all have to be passed back to
the customer at all, you just need lower enough prices that more
customers will use you than the competitor, right?
John
