You are correct. I distilled his process which gave me the conclusion that the only place he could really see any efficiency gains were in fuel efficiency or c

You are correct. I distilled his process which gave me the conclusion that the only place he could really see any efficiency gains were in fuel efficiency or cost. He's using a 40+ year old design for his engine (with modern equipment). His engine doesn't consist of fewer parts, it has a large R&D/Engineering budget, and carries with it the same launch pad staffing/rental fees that any other launch must have. The only place he can really optimize his solution is more efficient engines, cheaper fuel or, a much more reusable system. At this point, only the first booster stage is reusable and recovered which is possibly the least expensive part of his system. As his avionics gear must continue with the launch vehicle, it becomes unrecoverable. While I'm only an observer from afar, I believe his heavy lift capabilities will result in more fuel being required to make escape velocity. There is a reason that most heavy-lift rockets use solid rocket boosters. I really hope that they can bring down the cost of putting cargo into space. From what I see now, I don't see him doing anything significantly different from Ariennespace's approach which can recover/reuse the booster stage.... which brings us back to the only real thing he can do to reduce cost is improve fuel efficiency/fuel cost.