Some proposals for low cost heavy lift launchers.

In article 13663420.135.1335884487613.JavaMail.geo-discussion-
forums@vbfg3, says...

The announcement by two separate teams backed by highly regarded
scientists and entrepreneurs for asteroidal or lunar mining means
that quite likely there will be a significant market for super
heavy lift.

Why would this require heavy lift? The requirement is to return large
amounts of (valuable) materials to earth, not launch large amounts of
material from earth. This is especially true if you use in-situ fuel
production on a relatively small asteroid (small gravity well). In
order to make such a venture profitable, it would be very nice to lower
launch costs (per pound of payload) but that doesn't require heavy lift
either.

Even better is to keep as much of the transportation infrastructure in
space as you possibly can. Eliminating as many trips out of earth's
gravity well reduces costs without requiring larger or more frequent
launches.

SpaceX has shown by using good cost-saving business practices
to be able to produce a launcher at greatly reduced costs. They
estimate their upcoming Falcon Heavy will break the $1,000 per
pound barrier, or $2,000 per kg. Keep in mind then that
increasing the size of your launcher is supposed to reduce your
per kg costs. So likewise using good business practices, a
super heavy lift launcher privately developed should be able to
at least match this or exceed it. This would be in the range of
$200 million per launch for a ca. 100 mT launcher, a radically
reduced cost over that of the SLS.

There are limits when growing a system like this. When your super large
vehicle only flies a few times a year, you're still paying the "standing
army" to do nothing while they wait for the next super large payload to
launch. Saturn V and the space shuttle both suffered from the "standing
army" problem.

Jeff
--
" Ares 1 is a prime example of the fact that NASA just can't get it
up anymore... and when they can, it doesn't stay up long. "
- tinker

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article 13663420.135.1335884487613.JavaMail.geo-discussion-
forums@vbfg3, says...

The announcement by two separate teams backed by highly regarded
scientists and entrepreneurs for asteroidal or lunar mining means
that quite likely there will be a significant market for super
heavy lift.

Why would this require heavy lift? The requirement is to return large
amounts of (valuable) materials to earth, not launch large amounts of
material from earth. This is especially true if you use in-situ fuel
production on a relatively small asteroid (small gravity well). In
order to make such a venture profitable, it would be very nice to lower
launch costs (per pound of payload) but that doesn't require heavy lift
either.


The more I think about it, the more I think the biggest two problems will
be:

1) the environmental impact statement. Right now there's not enough need in
orbit for materials (other than possibly volatiles). But I can't really see
the "Ok, we're going to dump X tons of copper and rare-earths in your
backyard" going over well (and do you dump one large mass or many little
ones!)

2) market collapse. I still can't see this working whre you can bring back
enough materials at current prices to make it worthwhile, w/o collapsing the
market. That said, I'd love to see the numbers.

Personally, I think the best option right now is a minimal mass mission to a
smaller asteroid and then using something like an ion drive to nudge it into
an Earth intersecting orbit and use aerobraking to dump it into a remote
area and using normal earth-bond equipment to break it up.


Jeff

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

In article ,
says...

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article 13663420.135.1335884487613.JavaMail.geo-discussion-
forums@vbfg3, says...

The announcement by two separate teams backed by highly regarded
scientists and entrepreneurs for asteroidal or lunar mining means
that quite likely there will be a significant market for super
heavy lift.

Why would this require heavy lift? The requirement is to return large
amounts of (valuable) materials to earth, not launch large amounts of
material from earth. This is especially true if you use in-situ fuel
production on a relatively small asteroid (small gravity well). In
order to make such a venture profitable, it would be very nice to lower
launch costs (per pound of payload) but that doesn't require heavy lift
either.


The more I think about it, the more I think the biggest two problems will
be:

1) the environmental impact statement. Right now there's not enough need in
orbit for materials (other than possibly volatiles). But I can't really see
the "Ok, we're going to dump X tons of copper and rare-earths in your
backyard" going over well (and do you dump one large mass or many little
ones!)

2) market collapse. I still can't see this working whre you can bring back
enough materials at current prices to make it worthwhile, w/o collapsing the
market. That said, I'd love to see the numbers.

Personally, I think the best option right now is a minimal mass mission to a
smaller asteroid and then using something like an ion drive to nudge it into
an Earth intersecting orbit and use aerobraking to dump it into a remote
area and using normal earth-bond equipment to break it up.

Ion propulsion to get to the asteroid, but to get it back, you would
need to use propellants obtained from the asteroid. I'm not sure you'd
find suitable propellants, easily obtainable, for an ion engine on an
asteroid. Trying to launch enough ion propulsion mass from earth to do
the job would be economic suicide.

You might be better off with a solar powered engine using whatever
volatile reaction mass you can obtain from the asteroid.

Jeff
--
" Ares 1 is a prime example of the fact that NASA just can't get it
up anymore... and when they can, it doesn't stay up long. "
- tinker