[lupusreal]

Simply having to maintain one or more ships (continuous expense, year round, year after year), to fish those tubes out of the ocean (once every few years) almost certainly ate up any cost savings they could possibly get from refurbing the tubes.

[ChadBrogramer69]

And this lazy, reductive line of thinking is how they got to $4B/launch.

[lupusreal]

Lmao, do you have any idea how much ships cost? The spent SRBs being sunk are the least of SLS's problems. SRB shell refurbishment had dubious economic sense when Shuttle was flying several times a year, but for something that will fly as few times as SLS it would be an absolute farce.