Hacker News Reader

I think the above comment of it cost only a few hundred thousand dollars is just the cost of the fuel. Ancillary costs like moving the rocket, repairs, refueling, launch planning etc would also cost some money but it is still orders of magnitude cheaper than building new rockets or heavy repairs from crash landings.

View on HN

Thank you for the response. However, that is exactly my point. Orders of magnitude, plural, means the rocket will be 1% of the current cost. That means a $61 million rocket is on the order of $610,000.

I do not believe that raw material procurement and manufacturing account for 99% of current launches or 97% or 90%. Even if it did, I believe there would be significant amount devoted to quality inspections and testing before you could trust a used rocket that not only fired, but impacted the ground to be used again.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com