I love how when trying to figure out if reusable rockets are _actually_ cheaper you just get a lot of bold assertions about how much cheaper they either "are" or "must be" with absolutely no evidence whatsoever.
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I love how when trying to figure out if reusable rockets are _actually_ cheaper you just get a lot of bold assertions about how much cheaper they either "are" or "must be" with absolutely no evidence whatsoever.
Sometimes they will compare with launch platforms that are capable of doing—or required to do—significantly more, or they focus on the single per price but ignore all of the various externalities.
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@hrefna There's a perennial problem with online discussions on these sorts of subjects - the people with actual knowledge on the matter are either professional salespeople, so everything they say should be taken with salt (e.g. the CEOs) or aren't talking (most other professionals). The signal to noise ratio on the Internet isn't great at the best of times, and this is all before you add in the fandom attributes. There are conclusions that can be drawn, but they come with error bars.
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@hrefna the ceo of Stoke is on record estimating < 5 million usd per launch with full reuse, most of that is licensing/regulatory/range and fuel. I think there is some inspection too
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@rho A value I trust not at all it is so highly contextualized and because they don't have a working product yet. Lloyd's will tell you that insuring rockets is basically a crapshoot at the best of times, and it doesn't take a huge change in reliability to make launches orders of magnitude more expensive due to the payload risk.
Like part of what makes Atlas V launches so expensive is a combination of consistent reliability, schedule certainty, and what the platform is capable of.
