The Dark Ars Scholae Palatinae

ColdWetDog wrote:

But they're not that expensive either. In the grand schema of boats being holes in the water that you dump money into, a couple of modified barges and a general purpose Gulf workboat or two is pretty meh. All depends on how much money there is in boosting payloads a bit further.

And, of course, SpaceX is looking to offshore launches in the future so as not to annoy everyone in a fifty mile circle. That will take some marine capability and having some experience in that field may be useful.

The estimate I saw from someone in the shipbuilding industry was $10 million to build and outfit the barge, $60 thousand per month in berthing fees, and $120 thousand per launch in operating costs, not including insurance. Use one twice per month over ten years, and you're looking at an uninsured cost of around $200,000 per launch. Reduce the cadence to once per month, and it's over $260,000 per launch. For smaller launchers, it might not make economic sense the way it does for Falcon 9.

Edit to add: the $200k per launch is roughly the minimum possible even if launch cadence increases, because the cycle time for barge operations means you'll have to add more barges to consistently get more than 2 landings per month.