Here's some more sundry about RLVs and economics as I see them. Ian Woollard wrote:
> Yes. Or you find a very rich guy like Beal who > will fund most or all of the development. Most rich guys don't get rich through being million dollar philantropists. They can be more long-sigthed than VCs, and more patient, but they still expect to make ROI. Development costs need to be held within reason or it will take too long to make returns for it to be worth their efforts. > Actually, I think that the first RLVs will have to > be profitable at a small fraction of current total > launch mass (or nearly so). > > If you make the RLV a minimum size, then launching > 100x, might only launch as much mass as one Shuttle. While this may work in the long run, you'll still have a long time before it makes sense. Very few companies make 300lb satellites. Without some very significant vertical integrations (basically also building an orbital assembly facility), and having all your customers redesign their payloads to be launchable in that small of chunks, you won't get too much payback anytime soon. You may get a few tourist flights (as you could fit another person into something that size), but odds are that you couldn't make return quick enough. Making a RLV that can fly 100 times in a year is not trivial, and in fact a lot of the design *doesn't* scale down with size (though construction and handling costs do scale a bit). In the long run, it may make sense to break things up this small, but it'll be a while before it does. > No. It would take a few years to design a new vehicle > anyway. Whilst you are doing that, you can be trying > to sell contracts. If you don't manage to sell any; > you might as well pack up and go home. Here's the problem that you missed. If you are talking about some ultra small RLV, you'll have a hard time getting anyone to commit to you. This is due to the fact that if your system doesn't work, they're left completely stranded. Now, you may be able to pull off convincing them, but if you don't succeed, they take a huge hit. People don't like betting the farm on an unknown like that. Now, Dave Salt idea (slightly bigger RLVs in the 7000lbs to orbit size) might make sense for the current market, but then you also have to design transfer vehicles etc. This is a lot closer to making business sense, as it doesn't require the customer to make drastic changes in their billion dollar systems to launch on your vehicles, and it doesn't neccessarily require orbital infrastructure. That is an RLV system that *might* actually make sense at current flight rates (which was kinda my point). > Yes, but if your test flights generate an asset that > you can borrow against, it helps. For example the > RLV company buys a bunch of rocket fuel at a few > dollars a kilogram. They stuff it in the nose of the > test vehicle. Launch it. If it makes it; great, you > can potentially sell that payload; it's now worth > about $1000-4000/kg. If it doesn't- it didn't > actually cost you anything except the test flight, > which you were going to do anyway. While this sort of strategy is wise, you're overlooking some issues. First off, that fuel must be stored in some way that is useful. You'll need to design the system to keep it in orbit, to transfer it to others, to store it, to allow docking or grappling, etc. All of these are quite doable, but take more than a few bucks per kilogram. Coupling this to your RLV development just adds unneeded risks, and having an asset that can't be sold for a long time isn't always that wise. Most companies these days are trying to reduce inventory, and increase turn rates. Rand wrote: > Only way to land without wasting too much fuel > is to be really aggressive. Operationally, this > requires a full up burn above abort altitude to > make sure the engines work, and that pre-landing > burn wastes fuel and introduces new failure modes. If the system is designed as a capsule with a launch escape system (say if you wanted to make it the upper stage of a TSTO), you can have the hypergolically fueled LES act as a backup to the normal rockets. Would that help? ~Jon _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
