SpaceX's Grasshopper VTVL Finally Jumps Its Own Height

While the general tenor of your computation is in the right direction, you're not even closed to calculating the costs fairly. You're not being very rigorous with separating out capital vs operating expenditures. You are hitting shuttle launches with a share of all the development and infrastructure costs, but left that out for SpaceX.

But yes, the *incremental* cost of another shuttle launch is in the 500M range, which is still pretty pricey on a $/kg to orbit.

There are some aspects you've also sort of glossed over: Shuttle is a terrible way to get to GTO, so comparing GTO payload capacity isn't a good metric. Shuttle has the same 3000kg "downmass" capabilty, too, which I don't think F9 or GH have. If you want to bring things back for repair and refurbishment, that's a useful thing to have. Or, you could treat space like remote islands in the Aleutians.. never take anything back, and just dump the old stuff in an ever increasing pile out back for the amusement of workers on their time off.

That said, I think cheap expendable rockets like F9 are really the way to go for the immediate future.

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