You have to pay to get the rocket back anywhere near to a barge at all. If you don't want it back you just let it fall into the ocean without spending fuel on s

You have to pay to get the rocket back anywhere near to a barge at all. If you don't want it back you just let it fall into the ocean without spending fuel on slowing it down (and more fuel bringing that fuel along so that it is there to slow it down). You don't pay for a barge. You don't pay for the engineering work associated with bringing it back. Dropping rockets into the ocean was what everyone* did before SpaceX came along. If you're already paying the cost to bring it back though, it's very hard to imagine that you would have to pay to scrap it. The thing is primarily a large metal tank, and some engines made up of a bunch of metal - people pay money for the privilege of scrapping metal, not the other way around. * Technically some other countries dropped them on deserted land, or not so deserted land in the case of China.