The biggest cost is the machine. High precision and exotic materials are usually involved, and they're usually hand-crafted in small numbers, and require gigant

The biggest cost is the machine. High precision and exotic materials are usually involved, and they're usually hand-crafted in small numbers, and require gigantic tooling and facilities. And there's lots of testing and QA: since you don't get it back, you can't really test fly it. Imagine if you were flying people to China via airliner. One way. The majority of your ticket cost would not be in fuel. (A 747 is about $350M; fuel across the Pacific is on the order of $100K.) Note that reusing your vehicle solves a lot of those problems. But it's hard to do. Imagine that your 747 can just barely make it all the way to China, even if it's only carrying First Class, and there's no gas stations there. Volume solves the rest of the problem--but that means we need to figure out a lot to do in space that's worth the cost.