Rand Simberg Credibility - Space Tourism

"Tkalbfus1" wrote in message
...
Not bad. A turn around time of what, 4 days to relaunch the spaceship? A
$50
million dollar spaceship

What was the minimum turn around on the X-15?

.. I suppose a larger verson that is mass produced might
cost the same and might be launched 50 times a year at about $1 million
per
launch. A 10 passenger spacecraft would bring the ticket price to $100,000
dollars. A 30 minute suborbital flight could take a spacecraft 1/3rd of
the way
around the planet. That would be a worthy next goal. If a spaceship stays
in
spacve for 30 minutes, it has time to do something, such as space launch a
small satellite. Perhaps it could even undercut traditional satellite
launch
services for certain categories of satellites. One side benefit might be
cheaper satellite com services such as satellite phones. The market for
such
would drive investment towards even cheaper launch services and put it in
the
hands of commerical developers rather than the US government. As a
side-benefit, the US government could use these services to assemble
vehicles
in orbit that can reach the Moon and Mars.

Tom

October 5, 2004

Dave O'Neill wrote:

What was the minimum turn around on the X-15?

Ever heard of Google?

http://techreports.larc.nasa.gov/ltr...-93-tm4453.pdf

Thomas Lee Elifritz
http://elifritz.members.atlantic.net