alt Hacker NewsI think the onus is on you to explain why costs would drop by >3 orders of magnitude (>4 accounting for the 10x launch armor). It’s something like $1500/lb on a fully loaded Falcon Heavy and all indications are that SpaceX isn’t making money at that price.
Plus even if this were free, “shoot 180k tons of nuclear waste into space” seems like a terrible idea in general. It’s one of those ideas that make sense only until you think about the ramifications. What happens when inevitably one of the 3 thousand Falcon heavy rockets explodes and the armor fails and we spread nuclear waste over 3 states?
Falcon Heavy is more expensive per kg than F9, because it throws away more things. SpaceX flies it for certain military missions but you will note they launch their own stuff on F9.
A full launch on F9 (with recovered S1) is estimated to cost $15M and can put up to 17,600 kg into LEO, or $850/kg.
> (>4 accounting for the 10x launch armor).
You're double counting there. 3x would be just fine even with 10x launch armor.
> seems like a terrible idea in general
And here's the problem: you started from an emotional reaction and are trying to rationalize that.