John> The Falcon Heavy upper stage is not reusable, so you'd need a
John> new one of those every time - and they represent a larger
John> fraction of the total system cost than their relative size would
John> suggest.
That's a good point for sure. Hmm... imagine what a Falcon Heavy
Heavy would look like, with four boosters around a core. :-)
John> Also, the Deep Space Gateway as currently conceived include
John> elements too large for a Falcon Heavy to deliver to cislunar
John> space. And since the people developing the Gateway owe favors
John> to (and allegiance to the uberbosses of) the people developing
John> the SLS, they will almost certainly find what they will claim to
John> be sound, technical reasons why those pieces can't be made any
John> smaller and the SLS will be needed after all.
Meanwhile the inflatable modules will be put up by Elon and Bigelow
into Lunar orbit and they'll start renting space to NASA...