Fuel is indeed cheap (The Russkies are using kerosene and liquid oxygen---you can source those locally yourself.), but hardware isn't expensive, either. The expensive part is designing hardware that works correctly, given that it is 90% fuel.
If a car was a one-time-use vehicle, it would be much, much cheaper than it is now, when it's designed to last at least through the end of the warranty period. Likewise, the Space Shuttle was reusable, but that reusability never actually turned into a win.[2] (I have a rocket-scientist friend who might convincingly argue that putting the Space Shuttle's budget into building a Saturn V assembly line would have been a net win. Building the same rocket over and over seems to have worked for the Russians.)
There are two downsides to reusability, particularly for man-rated rockets: How do you land, and what do you have to do to turn it around.
As was pointed out in the article, IIRC, the Shuttle could put 120 tons into orbit, but 100 tons of that was coming back down with the re-entry vehicle. Kind of reduces the effective payload. I don't know the details of the SpaceX reusability design, but I'm wondering where the landing fuel comes from; if it rides the rocket the whole time, it's coming out of the 10%.
The turn-around part is bad, too. Take a look at [1] for the Shuttle. The interesting parts are:
* "Transfer engines to the Main Engine Processing
Facility and service for future flights," and "When required, the orbital maneuvering system
(OMS)/reaction control system (RCS) pods and forward
RCS may be removed and taken to the Hypergol Maintenance Facility in KSC’s industrial area for maintenance." Yes, SOP involves major disassembly every time.
* "Visual inspections are made of the orbiter’s thermal
protection system, selected structural elements, landing
gear, and other systems to determine if they sustained any
damage during the mission. Any damage to the thermal
protection system must be repaired before the next mission." If!? I don't know the numbers, but after every flight, every tile was checked and a goodly number needed replacement. (They're not cheap, either.)
Is SpaceX flying man-rated yet?
Anyway, turn-around costs and not caring about re-entry make for a bit of cheapitude, too.
The Russians put stuff into orbit relatively cheaply, but not by a huge margin. Building the same rocket over and over again has worked out OK for them, but it hasn't dramatically reduced the cost of access to space.
The landing fuel for SpaceX's design is the same fuel as used to launch. A reusable Falcon 9 launch will have 30% less payload capacity than an expendable one, because of the need to save fuel for the landing. But the cost savings will be vastly more than 30%. So overall it's a big net win.
SpaceX isn't man-rated yet. They don't yet have a spacecraft that can carry people, so there's no point. That's being worked on, of course. The Dragon 2 spacecraft that will carry people includes a launch escape system, so it will be much more tolerant of launch mishaps than the Shuttle was, where the options for surviving a serious failure on launch were pretty much just "pray."
Turnaround costs and reentry shielding actually illustrate just how different SpaceX's approach is from the Shuttle's. They're only reusing the first stage for now. That means that there's no real need for a thermal protection system, so no worries with tiles. The engines are stressed a lot less, so they break less. The engines are also much less efficient (which is to say much less fragile) than the Shuttle's, and should need no refurbishment for subsequent launches. They're looking at reusing the capsules as well, but the heat shielding on those is tiny compared to what a Shuttle needed. They're not currently looking to reuse the second stage at all, but of course the rocket equation tells us that reusing the first stage is a much bigger deal. Just reusing the first stage gets you 90% of the cost savings of reusing everything.
The Russians put stuff into orbit relatively cheaply, but not by a huge margin. Building the same rocket over and over again has worked out OK for them, but it hasn't dramatically reduced the cost of access to space.
Buran, the USSR's shuttle, was a reasonably good idea. Although it looked like the US shuttle, it was really a vehicle carried on a big booster; it had no main engines. It flew once, successfully, unmanned. The Boeing X-37 unmanned mini-shuttle is similar, and seems to work well. The USAF keeps sending one up, keeping it up for a year, and then bringing it down to land on a runway.
The Buran is really interesting. It's a pity it never got enough love. I'm not hugely familiar with it, but it does seem superficially like a better approach than the Shuttle.
If a car was a one-time-use vehicle, it would be much, much cheaper than it is now, when it's designed to last at least through the end of the warranty period. Likewise, the Space Shuttle was reusable, but that reusability never actually turned into a win.[2] (I have a rocket-scientist friend who might convincingly argue that putting the Space Shuttle's budget into building a Saturn V assembly line would have been a net win. Building the same rocket over and over seems to have worked for the Russians.)
There are two downsides to reusability, particularly for man-rated rockets: How do you land, and what do you have to do to turn it around.
As was pointed out in the article, IIRC, the Shuttle could put 120 tons into orbit, but 100 tons of that was coming back down with the re-entry vehicle. Kind of reduces the effective payload. I don't know the details of the SpaceX reusability design, but I'm wondering where the landing fuel comes from; if it rides the rocket the whole time, it's coming out of the 10%.
The turn-around part is bad, too. Take a look at [1] for the Shuttle. The interesting parts are:
* "Transfer engines to the Main Engine Processing Facility and service for future flights," and "When required, the orbital maneuvering system (OMS)/reaction control system (RCS) pods and forward RCS may be removed and taken to the Hypergol Maintenance Facility in KSC’s industrial area for maintenance." Yes, SOP involves major disassembly every time.
* "Visual inspections are made of the orbiter’s thermal protection system, selected structural elements, landing gear, and other systems to determine if they sustained any damage during the mission. Any damage to the thermal protection system must be repaired before the next mission." If!? I don't know the numbers, but after every flight, every tile was checked and a goodly number needed replacement. (They're not cheap, either.)
Is SpaceX flying man-rated yet?
Anyway, turn-around costs and not caring about re-entry make for a bit of cheapitude, too.
[1] http://www.nasa-klass.com/Curriculum/Get_Oriented%202/Space%...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle_...