Heinrich Zinndorf-Linker writes:

Am 9 Jul 2003 14:03:52 -0700 schrieb "John Schilling":

How do prices on Ion Drives compare to prices for Hall Thrusters?

There are no prices on ion thrusters; they are not commercially
available at any price.

The only US manufacturer of ion thrusters is Boeing Space Systems,
which will not sell them. They will, if you like, build and sell
you an entire spacecraft with ion thrusters, but you'll pay the
usual Boeing rate for the entire spacecraft.

OK, buy them in Germany, instead. The Germans will be glad to offer
you a hundred of them out of their catalogue, as you need them.

The Germans don't have a catalogue. They have a prototype thruster,
flown once, and some lab hardware and viewgraphs regarding larger
models to come. Commercial production and marketing are still in
the future, and they may not be glad to have you offer on their
behalf thrusters they aren't ready to make, thrusters they have
already promised to someone else, etc.

I strongly suspect that we will see German ion thrusters on commercial
spacecraft at some point. But that does not necessarily imply catalog
sales to whoever wants them; they might just as well make an exclusive
deal with a particular bus manufacturer.

You want anything approaching consistent free-market capitalist behavior
in this industry, you have to go a bit farther east than Germany.


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