The reusable rocket was the most expensive way to reach orbit. Until it wasn't #space #business

This is the price it cost all the way back in the Apollo days to put one kilogram into orbit. And the natural assumption is it goes down over time, right? Technology gets better, things get cheaper, it went up. The Saturn V, the rocket that took us to the moon, put a kilogram into orbit for about $12,000 in today's money. And then we built the thing that was supposed to fix all of that, the space shuttle. Designed to be reused, fly again and again, bring the cost down, the space shuttle was the most expensive way human beings have ever reached orbit. About $80,000 a kilogram. Of all the rockets we developed, the reusable one was the worst one. Until April 2016, when a private company landed a booster on a barge in the middle of the ocean and flew it again. The price of a kilogram to orbit fell more than 20-fold. The fuel, the kerosene and liquid oxygen you actually burn is about 0.3% of the cost of a rocket. A third of 1%. Everything else is the machine. For 60 years, we just threw the machine in the ocean after one flight. SpaceX, a business that cannot lose money forever and keep operating, stopped throwing away the machine. One of their boosters has now flown something like 34 times.