00:00Falcon Heavy has barely any technical competition, but demand for it is also limited.
00:06Critics use this exact point to argue that developing this launch vehicle was or still
00:12is a mistake. There are no public figures regarding the exact development costs.
00:18However, estimates suggest that SpaceX invested several hundred million dollars,
00:22possibly just over a billion, in development, testing and infrastructure.
00:26By spaceflight standards, that's surprisingly little. For comparison, the SLS sits at around
00:3330 billion and simply maintaining a Delta IV Heavy costed the Stell Pentagon half a billion US dollars a year.
00:40So, Falcon Heavy was a relatively inexpensive solution to a more demanding heavy lift challenge.
