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"Depreciation" and "capital cost" reflect the fact the vehicle has a maximum life, even given maintenance.

Imagine if I buy a $200,000 Lamborghini which, with regular servicing, will survive 100,000 miles.

That means for every mile I drive, not only am I paying for fuel, and insurance, and tyres, and servicing - I'm also paying, on average, $2/mile in depreciation.

And sure, the "true" value chart might not be linear. Maybe there'll be a sharp drop when the car ceases to be brand new, or a bump in value when it becomes a classic. But so long as it's worth $200k at 0 miles and $0 at 100k miles, the average cost of a mile must be $2.

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adastra22 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The statistics here are inverted. The main marginal cost of a launch is the risk of loss of payload which the customer must insure against. The risk of loss of payload actually goes DOWN with more launches, making costs cheaper the more a booster is reused.

It’s as if your car gained value with every mile driven.

	▲	nordsieck an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> The risk of loss of payload actually goes DOWN with more launches, making costs cheaper the more a booster is reused. I don't think that's true. All of the F9 failures[1] have been due to the 2nd stage. And that's new every time. --- 1. CRS-7, AMOS-6, and Starlink 9-3
	▲	sudosysgen an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The fact that customers launching exceptionally expensive payloads (the US space force, for one) tend to demand new boosters is not consistent with this. But even then, it doesn't change that the booster has a maximum lifespan and/or eventually increasing repair and therefore depreciation - we are working on an amortized basis.