Re: The Totalitarian Temptation in Space -Another Jeff Bell Editioral/Opinion Piece
- From: Fred J. McCall <fmccall@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2006 07:49:12 GMT
Alan Anderson <aranders@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
:Fred J. McCall <fmccall@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
:
:> It cost $30 million to develop SpaceShip One and fly it one time.
:
:(A third of that cost was recouped in prize winnings, but we can ignore
:that for the moment.)
In point of fact, I mentioned that somewhere in one of these.
:SpaceShipOne flew three times *to space*. Before that, it made more
:than a dozen less ambitious test flights. Your cost per flight numbers
:are off by over an order of magnitude at worst, and a factor of three at
:best.
Little short test flights don't count. So you're down to the trips to
space costing $10+ each.
:> It
:> will presumably cost at least that much to develop SpaceShip Two, plus
:> all the usual costs.
:
:If you meant "cost at least that much *more*", you're presuming
:something not in evidence. The bulk of the development for SpaceShipTwo
:was done as part of Tier One: the hybrid rocket motor system, the
:"shuttlecock" re-entry configuration, the avionics and associated
:software, the RCS, the ground support equipment, etc. The principal
:remaining development tasks are just to scale up the design...and to
:change the door to something more passenger-friendly.
You can't just make everything 3 times bigger. I don't think it's at
all unreasonable to assume that it will cost another $30 million to do
the bigger vehicle set. Use aircraft design for an example. What did
it cost to design the 747, even though Boeing had already done the
707?
:I think tooling tends to be a wash for a moderately-sized fleet; the
:increased up-front cost will be countered by decreased construction cost.
I don't know that there is a big enough production run in the
immediate cards to amortize any tooling. We're talking about 2
carrier aircraft and 5 space vehicles, right?
:As a commercial vehicle, getting the thing *certified* is going to take
:a pile of money. Is that one of the "usual costs" you were thinking of?
Yep, that's one of them, and given Hawker's experience trying to
certify an aircraft with a lot of composite structure, I suspect
they're going to have a lot of trouble with this. Hawker's been
working on certification for this one plane for almost 5 years now.
They've requested an extension, since if you take more than 5 years
you have to start all over again.
--
"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
.
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