Comments by "ke6gwf - Ben Blackburn" (@ke6gwf) on "" video.

@travcollier in other words, Peter is trying to make his decision not to copy SX sound reasonable. Same as ULA dismissing reusablity. But you have to look at two other factors as well. The reason Peter ate his hat is because he realized that if they were able to reuse rockets they could save money, by reducing the number of rockets they had to build. In other words, reusablity was cheaper than building a second factory. So the recovery plan used a parachute and a helicopter, which is cheaper than a barge landing, for a tiny rocket. It's not an option for SpaceX, because the Falcon 9 is MUCH too large to catch with a helicopter. So Peter's new bigger rocket design is designed to do propulsive landing, and he is talking about how much money he saves by not using a barge, but at what cost? SpaceX doesn't need a barge, they have RTLS pads right next to the launch pads, and they can save so much money. But at what cost? RTLS takes away a lot of performance from the rocket, so less payload to orbit. So while Peter might be saving money with no barge, he's also reducing the maximum payload he can carry for every flight, unless he goes full disposable. So basically SpaceX has to look at each payload and flight and decide if it's cheaper to run the barge out there, or just dispose of the rocket. And so far, between the actual cost savings of reuse, combined with the increased launch cadence allowed without building a new factory, the barges are a good investment. But then, you have to remember that SpaceX wants to get away from the barges as well, which is where you need Starship, because it's large enough to RTLS with any size payload, so you are not limiting your largest payload by RTLS. You can launch an actual big yellow bulldozer to the moon with it! And if someone made a large enough payload, they could do fully expendable and only be out a few million dollars in stainless steel lol So Peter is talking up his personal choices, but not presenting the full picture, such as how much RTLS limits his payloads. Falcon 9 ride share with that 3rd party custom space tug to deliver small sats to exact orbits will be cheaper than Neutron anyway, so it's only benefits are a little more scheduling customization. And then Starship should be even cheaper still. But, I suspect there are enough customers who don't want to give Elon money that Rocket Lab has a chance at survival lol
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@travcollier it seems it's a pissing contest between you and Musk however, as you seem to think that you know more about the internal SpaceX costs than they do. I assume the costs you are talking about are the government launches where they charge a lot more to deal with the extra government related costs, or like having to build a new vertical assembly building, which ULA already from previous government funded contracts. But you seem to be coming at this believing that SpaceX is getting subsidies, rather than being paid for services rendered, and that SpaceX is lying to NASA and customers and everyone. If your opinions are based on the premise that SpaceX is lying and cheating, then you are going to come to very different conclusions then the facts will lead to, and so argument is pointless since you can discard anything that SpaceX says as lies. Quite convenient actually! Lol
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