"Eric Chomko" wrote in message
...
Jeff Findley ) wrote:

: Eric seems to have missed this. It is my hope that a properly designed
: (reusable) commercial launch vehicle could reduce launch costs by at
least
: two orders of magnitude.

No I haven't missed it! If space is so profitable, then where is the
private industry? Bigelow's hotel and the whole space tourism looks good
on paper but I don't see venture capitalists flocking to throw cash your
way.

Partly because investors will need to be convinced that such cost reductions
really are possible. The "conventional wisdom" is that only government
sponsored agencies (i.e. US, Russia, and China) have the resources to put
people into space, so you've got to convince investors that this isn't the
case. SpaceShip One went a small way towards this goal, but there were
still many people who said it wasn't a "real" spaceship since it was
suborbital.

The other thing you've got to fight is that this will be a very long term
investment. Most investors today want to show returns on their investments
in days, months, or a few quarters. Lowering the cost of access to LEO
won't happen in that short timeframe.

Two orders of magnitude? So instead of folks like Tito paying $20,000,000
for a space vacation others can pay $200,000? I guess that is Branson's
dream.

Exactly. $200k is starting to come down to a price that someone in the
upper middle class could afford for a "once in a lifetime experience". Note
that this is essentially what Virgin Galactic is planning on initially
charging for suborbital flights. If Virgin can make money in the suborbital
market at this price, the orbital market will be even larger at the same
price.

I think that Virgin Galactic will need to show investors that there is money
in suborbital tourism before they'll start pouring "real money" into
companies working on orbital vehicles.


: If this is indeed the case, any company with such
: a vehicle could gobble up much of the existing launch market in short
order.
: Furthermore, such a reduction in costs would certainly open up new
markets
: as well (including orbital tourism).

I'm sure NASA and other agencies would love to reduce lauch costs. Hell
launches as a COTS product is definitely a goal.

Parts of NASA may want this, but other parts would like to see a shuttle
derived vehicle replace the shuttle, so that they can keep as many jobs at
KSC as possible. A truly reusable vehicle that lowers lauch costs by two
orders of magnitude simply won't need a standing army the size the shuttle
does (it can't, or it won't be that cheap). So a really cheap launch
vehicle will "hurt" NASA by forcing the layoffs of much of the shuttle
workforce (i.e the standing army).

: The only losers in such a scenario are the existing launch providers who
: will loose billions of dollars in revenues due to the lost business.
With

Yes, just like IBM lost billions due to the small computer market. Hurt um
so bad that they don't even exist anymore. Opps...

They still exist, but they don't make money on mainframes anymore, do they?
They had to evolve or die. They chose to evolve. The big aerospace
companies getting billions in revenue through their expendable launch
vehicles will have to do the same.

: Eric's proposal, the DOD program to build a new "space plane" would go
to
: those very companies who stand to loose the most from cheaper access to
: space. No doubt they would run such a program much like Delta IV and
Atlas
: V, with similar "reductions" in launch costs.

Do you honestly think that NASA and other governemnt agencies wouldn't
want to use your cheaper access to space? That they somehow like paying
more for launches?

As I said earlier, parts of NASA doesn't want costs to go down. You can't
reduce costs without reducing the size of the standing army and that means
job custs. Government agencies are notorious for fighing cuts that reduce
their workforce.

This is one reason that seemingly crazy ideas like an SRB derived launch
vehicle are seen coming out of NASA. Keeping the SRB alive means not only
keeping the jobs of the people who work on the SRB, but it also means
keeping the VAB open, the crawlers operational, and the shuttle pads
operational. This means that an SRB launch vehicle *can't* be much cheaper
than the shuttle, because you're keeping much of the shuttle's
infrastructure and standing army around to make it happen.

This standing army and infrastructure is one big reason that the shuttle
isn't really cheaper to operate than the Saturn V. Note that it uses much
of the same (albeit modified) infrastructure. Even worse, much of the
office space in the VAB had to be vacated due to the solids (and
hypergolics?) of the shuttle. Entire new buildings had to be built to
replace this essentially lost office space.

Geez, I'm the one accused of being a conspiracy monger and here you are
convinced that the current group of government contractors in space are
keeping small companies out just to keep the price of launches high. Is
that what you believe?

Actually this has happened. When investors go to ask NASA people if a
startup's ideas are any good, what do you think they say? Certainly it
depends on who in NASA they ask, but the conventional wisdom at NASA is that
spaceflight is necessarily expensive. The startups are going against this
wisdom and are in many ways trying to compete with NASA.

I have news for you, if you had something then they'd use it. Further, if
you had something, you'd be showing it. Since nothing exists, all you
have is shaking fists and whines.


Many startups do not seek or accept government funding. You should find out
why this is true before you start saying I'm making up conspiracies.

I think that keeping SpaceShip One secret until it was almost completely
developed was a very smart move. The only way they were able to do this was
because they had an investor with deep pockets. Once you start seeking out
funding from many sources, your plans start to become very public and open
to scrutiny from those that have a vested interest in the failure of those
plans.

People will do a lot to protect their phoney baloney jobs, just watch
Blazing Saddles. ;-)

Jeff
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