>The rocket is paid for with its primary mission. Elon has said that the fuel is a very small cost compared to the entire launch, so I would assume the cost to refly a "used" rocket is going to be orders of magnitude cheaper than the original flight.
Engineers have been scratching their heads for decades trying to figure out where all the money goes. For shuttle launches, depending on who's doing the accounting, fuel was something on the order of 2% of total launch costs. And the shuttle was reusable as well.
I think it's that disparity that attracted Musk to the rocket business in the first place. You look at the cost breakdowns and think "What? How can this be so expensive?" If everything goes his way he'll have cut the vehicle cost by a factor of at least 20 by the time he's done.
Engineers have been scratching their heads for decades trying to figure out where all the money goes. For shuttle launches, depending on who's doing the accounting, fuel was something on the order of 2% of total launch costs. And the shuttle was reusable as well.
I think it's that disparity that attracted Musk to the rocket business in the first place. You look at the cost breakdowns and think "What? How can this be so expensive?" If everything goes his way he'll have cut the vehicle cost by a factor of at least 20 by the time he's done.