Thread: Armstrong lauds another spaceman
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Old February 8th 06, 10:05 AM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.moderated,rec.arts.startrek.current
Fred J. McCall
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Default Armstrong lauds another spaceman
h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

:On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 04:38:43 -0600, in a place far, far away, "Fred J.
:McCall" made the phosphor on my monitor glow
:in such a way as to indicate that:
:
(Henry Spencer) wrote:
:
::In article ,
::Fred J. McCall wrote:
:::Turning the general populace into space enthusiasts *will not happen*, and
::lans which assume that it will are pointless fantasies. The only way to
:::get to (say) Mars is to lower the cost to the point that overwhelming
::ublic enthusiasm is not required.
::
::Which essentially says that it will never happen, Henry, since you
::have to start going there before there is an incentive to lower the
::cost of going there.
::
::Not at all. The single technical change that would contribute most to
::lowering the cost of a Mars expedition -- much cheaper launch to LEO -- is
::desirable for a number of more immediate reasons.
:
:And yet that doesn't seem to be progressing with great rapidity,
:either. It seems that EVERY new launch system I can remember promised
:to reduce cost of getting a pound to LEO to the $100 range.
:
:You must be living in some alternate reality.

Yes. I live in the one the actual world occurs in. Not sure about
your current residence.

:Most new launch systems
at least the ones that get formally proposed to the government) only
ropose to reduce the costs by an order of magnitude or so, if that.

That's what generally happens after downselect. The original number
proposed for the Shuttle, for example, was on the order of $150-$300
per pound with 100% reusability (and a much smaller payload and much
less crossrange capability). This relied on selling a *lot* of them
(something like 5 for NASA plus commercial sales after that).

This number rather rapidly devolved to the range you're discussing
(around $1500 per pound) as payload and crossrange requirements grew.
It still relied on 100% reusability and an unrealistic number of
Shuttles being constructed.

Now go look at the real number.

:In fact, the actual cost of getting a pound to LEO doesn't seem to
:have moved even a single order of magnitude over the entire history of
:real space launchers, much less the two orders of magnitude necessary
:to make 'swamping the problems with mass' really feasible.
:
:Only because there's little demand for it from the traditional
roviders of launch system development funds.

Largely because they don't believe it can be done and don't want to
fund yet more development of another system that doesn't hit the
target (again).

Do you truly believe that a system that cut price to LEO to the $1500
range wouldn't rapidly become the launch system of choice (assuming
payload capability similar to what is currently extant)?

Why would commercial users (in particular) stick with a higher-cost
system, all other things being equal?

--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw