Hey, I never said it would be easy ;-)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 philanthropists. They can be more long-sigthed than VCs, and more patient, but they still expect to make ROI.
Yes, of course. The trick is to come up with a killer business plan and spend little of the serious money until you are sure you can do it.Development costs need to be held within reason or it will take too long to make returns for it to be worth their efforts.
No, no. The main idea is to launch fuel a bit at a time, and then refuel a GEOsat on orbit before boosting it. The GEOsat goes up on a conventional ELV; Ariane or whatever. The essential point is for it to be a win/win proposition for every company involved, and I think that that is possible.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.
No. It's just a docking between a taxi service and the GeoSat. It does require some redesign of the satellite, but it's minor.Without some very significant vertical integrations (basically also building an orbital assembly facility),
I'm reasonably convinced that you're wrong; it seems likely that you could capture a small part of the GEOsat market and achieve pay back, getting tourist flights on top would be gravy. Pay back seems faster at the lower rates than with a bigger vehicle.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.
True. But many things are easier too. It doesn't seem to be impossible- there are launchers about this size already; but more expensive because they aren't reusable. Minimum orbital size is about 50kg payload (you can launch smaller payloads, but vehicle size doesn't vary much).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).
Yes, well it will take a while to build the vehicle ;-)In the long run, it may make sense to break things up this small, but it'll be a while before it does.
Actually, I thought about this. If they have designed their system for separate fuel and payload you can always launch the fuel on a separate expendable anyway. That's still cheaper because the taxi doesn't need launching each time.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.
No. It's too big. That makes it more expensive to construct, design and test. And it violates the launch-really-often paradigm, which is the main reason to go to RLVs in the first place (there just isn't a big enough market at the moment to support it). Also, his idea is a direct and immediate threat to the existing Geosat launchers, so basically whenever he brings it up with anyone in say, Arianespace, they never go for it.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 necessarily require orbital infrastructure. That is an RLV system that *might* actually make sense at current flight rates (which was kinda my point).
The point of this small RLV idea is that it is clearly NO threat. There's no way this vehicle could launch a Geosat on its own, but it can reduce the costs and improve profits of the existing launchers, and it may well be suitable for space tourism- and that is the bigger market. Even launching 1000 people (easily achieved with a small fleet of vehicles) would pay back all of the development costs and allow entry into the large profit regime that lies beyond.
Reasonable points. Still, as long as it's not a few thousand bucks per kilogram ;-)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.
But I don't see why it would be that high.
I don't see this. Being able to launch useful (extremely cheap) materials on test flights, with no significant upfront cost, and no prior customer money, seems to me to be of benefit.Coupling this to your RLV development just adds unneeded risks,
It may be that you could sell the material well before the end of the testing. That depends on the salesmanship and the market, which until you investigate you cannot know whether it is there.and having an asset that can't be sold for a long time isn't always that wise.
~Jon
-- -Ian Motto: "You're Not Authorized to Know Our Motto." So, like, how many lives DOES Shroedinger's cat have anyway?
