George William Herbert wrote:
Terrell Miller wrote:
"Henry Spencer" wrote:
2000 launches in 10 years is 200/yr, which is only twice the rate [...]

It's not merely remotely feasible, it's clearly and straightforwardly
feasible. Good design in the launcher and the ground-support facilities
will certainly help, but the only part that's *necessary* is ample money.

But *clear*, *straightforward* and *feasible*?!?

Yes.

I would like to follow this up a bit.

I can't really go into details without violating MTCR,
however, a field of apparently 25-odd companies,
including my business, bid on a recent DARPA/US Air Force
R&D project towards building a low cost high flight rate
space launch / ICBM program, the FALCON project.

While an actual annual flight rate of 200 per year
exceeds the rate which the specifications required,
meeting some of the other specifications basically
required a system which could easily fly 200 flights
per year.

Some of the bidders on FALCON were bidding equipment
that is already in development or partially flying.
Many others were bidding new proposals. Many of the
names involved will be very familiar to those following
the field.

I didn't win; I believe I know who did, though there has
been no official announcement yet. But it's probably
going to be more than 5 winners on the launch vehicle
side, and that means that the USAF and DARPA have
found at least 5 credible winning proposals out of
a field of 25 or so submitters, who believe that they
can build a system which should be capable of, among other
things, flying 200 or so missions a year as a logical
extension of some of the other requirements, if that
many payloads were to show up.

It's not that someone thinks they can fly that often;
it's that *everyone* thought they could match the specs.
Including all of the usual big aerospace suspects,
all of the usual suspects small aerospace companies,
and quite a few out of nowhere startups.


-george william herbert