Intelsat 35e Mission [pdf]
spacex.com
spacex.com
At some point the Falcon9 heavy will be flying. And with it comes the ability to put a heavier mass into orbit, or to put what an F9 could put into orbit but could not recover the boosters from.
So on a mission like this, if it "upgraded" to a Falcon9 heavy and all three boosters were recovered, then it seems the marginal cost difference would be the cost of fuel versus the cost of a booster. Since it has been asserted that the fuel cost is 'insignificant' compared to the cost of a booster, does the math pencil out?
Of course there is a risk of losing all three boosters but in other transport industries spending additional fuel to save operational costs is often a good strategy. I'm wondering if that is being considered once F9H is qualified.
The general consensus from arm chair rocket scientists is that the expendable version of the F9 will eventually be phased out completely. The one place it may remain is for customers who want a brand new rocket and also have an unrecoverable mission profile.
As long as the Falcon Heavy is reliable, and the three cores are reliably recovered, it makes sense to replace an F9 expendable launch with a heavy launch. That won't happen immediately, but if the progress goes along a similar trajectory as the F9 did it probably won't take too long before every F9 core is recovered.
Worth noting as well - the Falcon Heavy is never referred to as F9, but rather as F27, as the number refers to the number of engines on the main stage.
http://i.imgur.com/HVJtlTR.jpg
The shuttle launched on its scheduled launch date only 40% of the time. 56.2% of the delays were due to technical reasons, not weather.
Imagine that, due to price (you save, I'm guessing, $40m or more) you choose a young rocket company that has experienced two serious failures that destroyed the payload.
Imagine that company is very cautious and will happily abort any launch that looks odd.
I imagine the caution is a positive aspect.
To the second half of the question:
I know the fuel is nominally $300k - or that's the number Elon uses. I don't know if they can recover the fuel or have to vent it in the event of a scrub. And the ground crew and launch prep has some cost. We could speculate that the total cost of launching is on the order of $5m (not including the vehicle and associated engineering), but that those costs do eventually result in a launch. A scrub costs salaries and hotel stays of ground crew, fees paid to overseeing agencies for range patrol, and any lost fuel - maybe $1-2m.
This is all speculation. I don't have real answers. I'm also reasonably sure the parent wasn't in dire need of a critically accurate answer so I hope my efforts to estimate an answer might be helpful to someone.