It blows my mind that SpaceX’s would think that “fuel costs don’t matter” given that the company is run by Elon Musk, who when he’s not doing SpaceX is running Tesla and being Chairman of SolarCity where fuel costs, in particular the environmental fuel costs, are basically the only thing that matter. It takes the equivalent of 25,000 gallons of gas to put a 200 lb person into orbit on a SpaceX rocket (yes, I know it’s not necessarily gasoline, but other fuels that are also either fossil fuels or create from burning fossil fuels). So a person would have to drive a Tesla for 120 years to save enough fuel for one spot on a SpaceX launch into orbit. Do environmental fuel costs only matter when you can save a few gallons on a two hour car trip, but not when you use 25,000 gallons for a two our jaunt into space and back?
Constructing machinery has huge environmental costs as well. The CO2 emitted in the construction of a car rivals that emitted by driving it afterwards, for example.
Getting into orbit requires a huge amount of energy. That's just physics, and there's no way around it. Spending lots of money on extremely complicated and efficient machinery to use less fuel getting to orbit does not mean you're more environmentally friendly.
Also, numbers matter. The environmental costs of space travel are completely insignificant, while cars are choking the planet, simply because there are billions of them. A tiny efficiency improvement applied to billions of cars will dwarf a gigantic efficiency improvement applied to a few rocket launches per year.
Good point about billions of cars having more impact than a few fuel-hoggy rocket launches.
I just hope that space-tourism doesn't catch on, because while you're correct that overproducing rockets to make them slightly more efficient does not make you more environmentally friendly, burning 25,000 gallons for a couple of recreational hours off the planet just because you have way too much money does make you an environmental monster.
