At least for the first decade or two (maybe still - I don't know) the shuttle SRBs were only recovered for political reasons - the system was supposed to be reu

At least for the first decade or two (maybe still - I don't know) the shuttle SRBs were only recovered for political reasons - the system was supposed to be reusable and they didn't want to be accused of building an expensive disposable rocket. By the time the boosters were recovered disassembled, had every inch checked for damage (visible and xray), and rebuilt, the cost was more than if they'd just left off the parachutes and built a new pair for every launch. In theory if you landed the first stage of a liquid fueled rocket back near the launch site you could just gas it up and launch again, since the stresses are so much lower. I doubt that's what will happen, though - they'll give it a pretty thorough (and expensive) going over the way NASA did with the SSME. There are two ways this could make sense from a cost perspective. One is after a confidence-building period they just do quick inspections and live with a slightly higher failure rate on subsequent launches. This would mean the second and subsequent missions are unmanned only, and it would have to bring the cost down so much that satellite makers could afford the risk. The second is they just do relatively quick and cheap inspections and the increased failure rate is so small it's balanced out by the decrease in failures due to manufacturing error. This is really the holy grail of the rocket business, since it means you start to operate on the same economics the airlines do, where fuel is the cost driver. In rocket launches fuel typically comes to about 2% of the cost. Putting a kg into LEO takes about the same amount of energy as flying it from LA to Sydney on a 747. The reason sending that kg to Sydney is so much cheaper is they turn the plane around and fly somewhere else instead of throwing it away.