We are entering an era of cheap launch costs. Duplication of a design costs near-zero, all the price is in the fabrication capacity, the design, the testing, t

We are entering an era of cheap launch costs. Duplication of a design costs near-zero, all the price is in the fabrication capacity, the design, the testing, the engineering, keeping a subject-matter-expert control team on standby to make executive decisions for a few hours a month, and the remaining launch costs. In practice, the Space Shuttle Transportation System, fully ammortized, cost about $1.5B per launch to loft 15 tons to low orbit in practice. Falcon Heavy will launch about 40 tons for ~$100M, a factor of 40 improvement. The Russian launch vehicle Proton-M was already at about 20 tons for ~$100M, and Atlas V 552 about 20 tons for ~$200M.