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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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Thunderf00t is a pompous simpleton, don't believe his click bait.

It doesn't matter how much fuel a rocket uses, or if the rocket uses more fuel to be reusable, because fuel cost are negligible in the grand scheme of things.

The propellant cost of a Falcon 9 is around $300.000 for liquid oxygen and $200.000 for rocket grade kerosine (you also need to buy expensive Helium to pressurize tanks, there is a statement of Musk that this costs as much as oxygen).

https://spaceimpulse.com/2023/06/13/how-much-does-rocket-fuel-cost/

So propellant cost is well under a million dollars. Even the Space Shuttle only used a few millions (but the Shuttle project cost billions every year).

Fuel is nothing. SpaceX sells a launch for $67 million.

Sure, there is the cost for ground infrastructure, but this is a fixed cost and is proportional cheaper the more launches SpaceX does. We don't know the cost for refurbishment, but not throwing the engines away alone must be a big win. The last time the company took investor money was in January 2023 (750 million). Their cost of business/revenue is now guessed as over a dozen billions. This is not possible if they are not cashflow positive. I am unsure if they are profitable altogether because they invest so much in Starship, they are building another launch tower in Texas and two other Starship towers in Florida, but this is just building the machine which builds the thing.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=kpK1h4GvGPs