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Comment by patapong | Hacker News Reader

If the plan is to scrap the rocket no matter whether it succeeds or fails, does it cost anything? All of these seem like data gathering missions to me.

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Yes, of course it has a cost. Material has value. Even Elon doesn’t have unlimited capital. Even if raw material was “free” there’s still the opportunity cost of simply selling the material and pocketing the cash. The test may be worthwhile but that doesn’t make it free.

For this type of operation I think asking about the material cost isn't very useful considering how vertically integrated they are. They're still paying the workforce whether the test happens or anything is built. The input raw material is pretty close to "free" as it comes in as giant rolls of sheet steel.

I think the issue you seem to be missing is that the marginal cost of materials that go into building a rocket is very low. The fuel cost is similarly a small percentage of the cost of building a rocket. The cost comes from the large workforce required and the low flight rate.

It's amusing that you posit the notion that instead of launching the rocket (its entire purpose to exist), they might disassemble it for scrap to save some cash.

They built the rocket out of raw material which they paid for. I’m not sure what’s hard to follow here. Rockets aren’t free. How is that controversial?

SpaceX has built and scrapped 17 Starships, 14 of them without even a static fire. They have scrapped four Super Heavy boosters, three of them without firing.

Test flights require fuel, planning, approval, and of course flight hardware. None of that is free.

They could save money by not building any rockets at all, that's much cheaper.

The engines are expensive.

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