Cheap Access to Space

wrote:
:
:Now for my proposal.
:
:I propose, -decrease- the payload fraction, thus increasing the mass
f the vehicle, on purpose. Why you might ask? Because the first stage
:is not reusable in the above system. But if the first stage is a
:rocket-plane that flies to above 40 km and then deploys a 2-stage
:rocket system that boosts to orbit, instead of a throw-away system,
:then it is true the weight of the wings -adds- to the total weight of
:the system, but the first stage, which is the most massive part of the
:vehicle, becomes reusable.
:

Your proposal amounts to the proposition that reusable vehicles are
cheaper than expendable vehicles, assuming they cost no more to build
per pound, require no maintenance, and are good for a relatively large
number of flights on that basis.

The problem is

1) Reusable vehicles are going to cost more per pound than
expendables.

2) They're probably going to have significant maintenance costs spread
over their flight lifetime.

3) If you want them to last for a long time the prior two costs
increase even further.

The Space Shuttle has a big, costly reusable piece. Under your model
it ought to lead to significant cost savings. It doesn't. Examining
why it doesn't will show you where some of the flaws in your thinking
are.


--
"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

On Dec 15, 10:20 pm, Fred J. McCall wrote:
The problem is

1) Reusable vehicles are going to cost more per pound than
expendables.

2) They're probably going to have significant maintenance costs spread
over their flight lifetime.

3) If you want them to last for a long time the prior two costs
increase even further.

The Space Shuttle has a big, costly reusable piece. Under your model
it ought to lead to significant cost savings. It doesn't. Examining
why it doesn't will show you where some of the flaws in your thinking
are.

You make a good point, according to me the Space Shuttle should be
cheap too. But I still think $100/kg is physically possible. Is not
the method I describe within the laws of physics, to be possible?

Also, the Space Shuttle orbiter actually flies to orbit! This makes it
much more expensive than my proposed flying first stage, which needs
only return from 40 km and will never exceed Mach 6 on reentry. This
makes it more like an (albeit hypersonic) airplane, and I was hoping
costs could come down for it, too.

There is one "catch", though. I calculated the power the first stage
needs is in the hundreds of gigawatts. The space shuttle meanwhile
runs in the tens of gigawatts. That is to say, it might be hard to
physically make an LH2-LOX rocket that can fire for some 60 seconds,
250 times, with the thrust we need. Total firing time is around 4+
hours.

On 16 Dec, 01:34, Sylvia Else wrote:
wrote:
That is to say, the first stage "reusable" space plane costs $126
million. We amortize it over 250 flights, assuming it is good for that
many flights. Dividing $126 million by 250, we find the cost of the
first stage is only about $500,000 per flight. Compare that to the $25
million cost of the disposable first stage!

What's the minimum time to perform those 250 missions using a single
reusable launcher? You cannot just divide the initial capital cost by
the number of flights to get the cost per flight, because you're
incurring an opportunity cost on the capital tied up in the launcher.

The cost per flight also has to include a component that reflects the
risk that the launcher will be lost before completing its 250 missions.
This might be covered by insurance, but either way it's a cost that has
to be included.

Absolutely. You are in fact talking about 500 rather than 250 flights
therefore. The amorization is a proportion of the cost. Insurance,
wear, tear and replacement another component.

There is one fundamental fact that nobody (except me) raises and that
is MARKET. You cannot reduce costs without a market. The first step in
reducing costs is to consolidate the market, in other words globalize.

A hypersonic plane is in a slightly different position in that there
is an air transport market as well. I did mention that one route to
lower costs was in terms simply of reducing expendable costs. Let us
look at it this way. If you visit the Ford Motor Companty you will
find hightly automated production lines producing cheap cars. Today
there is no longer such a thing as a "Friday car" as every car is
assembled automatically, and a Ford Focus is built to a higher
precision than a Rolls Royce. Is this the road to go down? Is the
right road simply to produce existing technology cheaper? Is the right
way to have one (perhaps you need 2 for safety) type(s) of rocket
reaching LEO and mass produce?

To be blunt, the market does not justify a reusable vehicle. If you
consolidated the market you would start to get savings. This is so
whether your savings came from a reusable vehicle or from lower
production costs.


- Ian Parker

wrote in message
...
There has been lots of interest in Scramjets because of their
potential to lower the cost of access to space, or Single Stage to
Orbit as a means of lowering cost of access to space.


I personally believe we won't see cheap (as in: every ordinary Joe can go
into space for the price of an expensive airplane ticket) access to space
for hundreds of years. Why? Because no matter how you view it we're still
using good-old fashioned momentum-transfer technology where we spit out
something in one direction and we and the rocket move in the other. Rocket
technology is and will most likely continue to be the easiest and best way
to get into space but due to the size and explosiveness of these vehicles it
will remain something of a hazardous experience making it impossible to
launch millions of people into space.

If we can make a anti-gravitic drive which is relatively cheap to build,
small and uses a safe nuclear power source will mass-transportation into
space be possible. But this first requires full-understanding of the laws of
physics which we, at the moment, don't have and could be decades or hundreds
of years away.

Another possibillity would be the construction of a space-elevator. The
chances of this succeeding are much higher, but this will only get us into
orbit. It will be interesting to see if this becomes a reality in the next
decades or that it keeps eluding us.



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

On Sun, 16 Dec 2007 03:54:48 -0800 (PST), Ian Parker
wrote:

To be blunt, the market does not justify a reusable vehicle. If you
consolidated the market you would start to get savings. This is so
whether your savings came from a reusable vehicle or from lower
production costs.

The market *will not* justify a reusable vehicle, until one comes
along. Everybody was fine with ground travel, until the airplane came
along. Everybody thought there was no need for anything better than a
horse-and-buggy, until the automobile came along.

:-)

On 16 Dec, 13:22, Len Lekx wrote:
On Sun, 16 Dec 2007 03:54:48 -0800 (PST), Ian Parker

wrote:
To be blunt, the market does not justify a reusable vehicle. If you
consolidated the market you would start to get savings. This is so
whether your savings came from a reusable vehicle or from lower
production costs.

The market *will not* justify a reusable vehicle, until one comes
along. Everybody was fine with ground travel, until the airplane came
along. Everybody thought there was no need for anything better than a
horse-and-buggy, until the automobile came along.

:-)

Of course here lies a dilemna, faith etc. Henry Ford saw a market and
had faith. Now my remarks about globalization apply universally. It is
easier to have faith in global space.

We do not have to leap completely in the dark. We can look at specific
areas. The advocates of cheap access point to tourism, but I find it
hard to convince nyself that this is the market. I personally would
think far more in terms of Space Solar Power and sunshields against
global warming. Perhaps weather control.

The ability to have a telescope a kilometer across would be nice too,
but science could never be the "killer" market.

From a marketing perspective access has to be very, very much cheaper
1% of the present price rather than 10%. One of the things that
"marketing man" will do is to establish elasticity. If the price falls
to 10% are you going to launch 10 times more, 100 times more. If 10
times more you are not bringing in any more money. You need to have
100 times for your business plan to be viable. My gut feeling is that
10% would increase launches by 5 times (less money in fact). 1% and
you might then start to see a 1000 fold increase. This is my gut
feeling. It is based on the fact that 10% would not bring in much in
the way of new space users. It would mean that existing users got
their launches cheaper.


- Ian Parker

Ian Parker wrote:
:
:We do not have to leap completely in the dark. We can look at specific
:areas. The advocates of cheap access point to tourism, but I find it
:hard to convince nyself that this is the market. I personally would
:think far more in terms of Space Solar Power and sunshields against
:global warming. Perhaps weather control.
:

I doubt SPS is economically viable until after you have sufficient
space infrastructure and population so that using space resources for
construction becomes reasonably cost effective.

Sunshields are a pipe dream.

Weather control probably would wind up being a cause for war if it was
actually used by someone, since you can't change weather one place
without affecting it lots of other places and some of those other
places are going to be much worse than they would have been.

:
:The ability to have a telescope a kilometer across would be nice too,
:but science could never be the "killer" market.
:

Likely not and there is no big driver to force prices down for 'big
science' access.

:
:From a marketing perspective access has to be very, very much cheaper
:1% of the present price rather than 10%. One of the things that
:"marketing man" will do is to establish elasticity. If the price falls
:to 10% are you going to launch 10 times more, 100 times more. If 10
:times more you are not bringing in any more money. You need to have
:100 times for your business plan to be viable.
:

And this is the problem and why prices aren't forced lower. You have
to look at more than just the overall cost. What drives any of the
big players to spend the money to develop cheaper systems when they
don't get a payoff back?

:
:My gut feeling is that
:10% would increase launches by 5 times (less money in fact). 1% and
:you might then start to see a 1000 fold increase. This is my gut
:feeling. It is based on the fact that 10% would not bring in much in
:the way of new space users. It would mean that existing users got
:their launches cheaper.
:

'Gut feeling' isn't a business plan. Where do you think the extra
launch activity would come from and what is its price point?


--
"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

On Dec 16, 6:54 am, Ian Parker wrote:
On 16 Dec, 01:34, Sylvia Else wrote:

wrote:
That is to say, the first stage "reusable" space plane costs $126
million. We amortize it over 250 flights, assuming it is good for that
many flights. Dividing $126 million by 250, we find the cost of the
first stage is only about $500,000 per flight. Compare that to the $25
million cost of the disposable first stage!

What's the minimum time to perform those 250 missions using a single
reusable launcher? You cannot just divide the initial capital cost by
the number of flights to get the cost per flight, because you're
incurring an opportunity cost on the capital tied up in the launcher.

The cost per flight also has to include a component that reflects the
risk that the launcher will be lost before completing its 250 missions.
This might be covered by insurance, but either way it's a cost that has
to be included.

Absolutely. You are in fact talking about 500 rather than 250 flights
therefore. The amorization is a proportion of the cost. Insurance,
wear, tear and replacement another component.

There is one fundamental fact that nobody (except me)

.....unless you want to count me for the last
45 years.....

Len

..... raises and that
is MARKET. You cannot reduce costs without a market. The first step in
reducing costs is to consolidate the market, in other words globalize.

A hypersonic plane is in a slightly different position in that there
is an air transport market as well. I did mention that one route to
lower costs was in terms simply of reducing expendable costs. Let us
look at it this way. If you visit the Ford Motor Companty you will
find hightly automated production lines producing cheap cars. Today
there is no longer such a thing as a "Friday car" as every car is
assembled automatically, and a Ford Focus is built to a higher
precision than a Rolls Royce. Is this the road to go down? Is the
right road simply to produce existing technology cheaper? Is the right
way to have one (perhaps you need 2 for safety) type(s) of rocket
reaching LEO and mass produce?

To be blunt, the market does not justify a reusable vehicle. If you
consolidated the market you would start to get savings. This is so
whether your savings came from a reusable vehicle or from lower
production costs.

You don't consoldate. You ignore the current
market as completely irrelevant. You then address
the new markets enabled by the new capability.
Then you have to sell both the new application(s)
and the new transport vehicle as a package.
That has been our plan for 45 years.

Admittedly, a tough sell, but quite hopeful
of late.

Len

- Ian Parker

On 16 Dec, 17:39, Fred J. McCall wrote:
Ian Parker wrote:

:
:We do not have to leap completely in the dark. We can look at specific
:areas. The advocates of cheap access point to tourism, but I find it
:hard to convince nyself that this is the market. I personally would
:think far more in terms of Space Solar Power and sunshields against
:global warming. Perhaps weather control.
:

I doubt SPS is economically viable until after you have sufficient
space infrastructure and population so that using space resources for
construction becomes reasonably cost effective.

Sunshields are a pipe dream.

Weather control probably would wind up being a cause for war if it was
actually used by someone, since you can't change weather one place
without affecting it lots of other places and some of those other
places are going to be much worse than they would have been.

:
:The ability to have a telescope a kilometer across would be nice too,
:but science could never be the "killer" market.
:

Likely not and there is no big driver to force prices down for 'big
science' access.

:
:From a marketing perspective access has to be very, very much cheaper
:1% of the present price rather than 10%. One of the things that
:"marketing man" will do is to establish elasticity. If the price falls
:to 10% are you going to launch 10 times more, 100 times more. If 10
:times more you are not bringing in any more money. You need to have
:100 times for your business plan to be viable.
:

And this is the problem and why prices aren't forced lower. You have
to look at more than just the overall cost. What drives any of the
big players to spend the money to develop cheaper systems when they
don't get a payoff back?

:
:My gut feeling is that
:10% would increase launches by 5 times (less money in fact). 1% and
:you might then start to see a 1000 fold increase. This is my gut
:feeling. It is based on the fact that 10% would not bring in much in
:the way of new space users. It would mean that existing users got
:their launches cheaper.
:

'Gut feeling' isn't a business plan. Where do you think the extra
launch activity would come from and what is its price point?

--
"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

Basically the viability of SPS depends on transportation. GEO is the
ideal place for solar power. The Sun always shines - there are short
eclipses at around the time of equinoxes but not really worth
considering. Even in a desert the amount of "good" sunlight is quite
limited. It gets dark and the Sun is often at quite an oblique angle.
The problem is getting the stuff there and the cost of getting it
there. Buzz Aldrin should stipulate a cost per Kg.

If you are saying that it will be enormously easier with asteroid
material, you are of course right. What I was trying to work out was
the establishment of a market of some description.

I do not believe there will be enough tourists for a killer market.
"Killer" here refers to the market that justifies the costs and drives
it. You will have to be rich and you will have to be a space
enthusiast. Are there enough people with both those qualifications?


- Ian Parker

On Sun, 16 Dec 2007 11:38:28 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away,
Ian Parker made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

I do not believe there will be enough tourists for a killer market.

As has been previously noted, few, if any, care what you believe.

"Killer" here refers to the market that justifies the costs and drives
it. You will have to be rich and you will have to be a space
enthusiast. Are there enough people with both those qualifications?

One does not have to be a space enthusiast to want to take a ride into
space, any more than one must be a "canyon enthusiast" to want to see
the Grand Canyon.