At 09:56 AM 2/19/2003 +0000, Ian Woollard wrote:
Randall Clague wrote:That puts launch costs between $25/lb and $100/lb to LEO. Anyone think that's feasible?Laser launch can probably do that.
To my mind, beam launching (laser and microwave) is the same sort of technology as space elevators -- they only make sense where a mature, robust market already exists. There's substantial amounts of basic research to be done in several fields to make them practical, and they have massive infrastructure costs on top of the development costs. However, if your flight rate is high enough, even those can eventually sink into the noise.
Personally, I think that $100/lb is probably achievable with rocket vehicles, given sufficiently high flight rates. This is because the lion's share of the cost of flight now is not operations (well, as long as you don't count the Shuttle :), but vehicle acquisition (R&D + manufacturing). High flight rates cut into that by allowing those costs to be spread over a greater number of payloads. This also allows the developers to mount an attack on operations costs by devoting more development time and manufacturing expense to improving operations.
-p
Mars or Bust!
www.marssociety.com
_______________________________________________
ERPS-list mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
