## The Boeing / ULA Destroyer
For 60 years, governments built $200 million rockets, launched them into orbit, and let them crash into the Pacific Ocean. This was the equivalent of flying a Boeing 747 from New York to London and then throwing the entire airplane into the trash to build a new one for the return trip.
### FAQ
**Q: Why did SpaceX mathematically break the aerospace industry?**
A: By landing the First Stage booster on a drone ship, SpaceX took the single most expensive piece of the rocket (the $25M booster with 9 engines) and simply divided that cost across 10 or 15 flights. Even though they still throw away the upper stage and pay a few million in fuel and refurbishment, the core 'fixed cost' of the rocket drops by over 90%. This dropped the price of launching a kilogram to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) from $10,000 to under $2,000, creating an absolute monopoly on global spaceflight.