Re: ...Nasa/Griffin LYING about Public Support for Moon/Mars Missions!

Demand and cost are related. Reduce costs, and demand rises. Right
now there is a demand for communications satellites, navigation
satellites, sensing satellites. Collectively I call these infosats.
At a slightly lower cost to access space communications can become far
more sophisticated than at present as we progress from point-to-point
systems (telstar) to one-to-many systems (XM, Sirius, DirecTV) and
ultimately many-to-many systems (Iridium, Globalstar) As costs
continue to decline demand should continue to rise. As far back as
1968 there were proposed powersats, the next step beyond infosats.

I have proposed factory-sats, manufacturing in space as a further level
of sophistication. This is the next step beyond powersats. Factory
sats are initially realized in two-phases. The first phase uses a very
capable means of space propulsion, like nuclear pulse, to move large
quantities of raw material into position around the Earth. The second
phase involves orbiting large remote manufacturing facilities that are
manned remotely at first, and then fully automated at some point.
Solar power and asteroidal feedstock is transformed into all manner of
manufactured goods and rain down like manna from heaven directly to
consumers on the ground, using the infosat network and navsat network
to guide delivery capsules to end consumers directly.

Beyond this the factorysats can also produce goods for use IN space,
vastly increasing our capacities there. Just as comsats move from
point-to-point to one-to-many to many-to-many, so too do factory sats
have a clear development cycle. They move from raw materials to
industrial goods, to finished goods to consumer goods and ultimately,
to food and fiber made in space aboard large pressure vessels.
Ultimately, these pressure vessels become habitats where people live at
a very high standard of living.

What controls cost of access? Cost of momentum! The speed and size of
a payload can be multiplied together to obtain momentum, and the cost
of that is the principal driver of market size.

The Delta G for example in 1966

Cost: $10.2 million
dV 9.2 km/sec (ideal)
m 430 kg

p=mv 3.95 mega - kg-m/sec
Cost of momentum $2.58 per kg-m/sec

Delta IV Heavy in 2001

Cost: $254 million
dV 8.8 km/sec (ideal)
m 25,800 kg

p=mv 227.04 mega - kg-m/sec
Cost of momentum $1.12 per kg-m/sec

So this is an average reduction of price of 2.36% per year.

At this rate it will take 96 years of development to reduce costs to
1/10th their current prices! This seems glacially slow to me. Is there
a reason for this? I think so, lack of investment in reducing this
important meaasure of performance. Why is that? Well, one reason we
might not want cheap rockets is because we don't want cheap ICBMs in
the hands of potential adversaries. In fact we have a policy of
containing missile proliferation, and if you can build a space capable
vehicle, that vehicle makes a dandy long range weapons platform!

Could things progress faster? Yes! Larger vehicles, reusable
vehicles, more automated vehicles, these seem to be the direction worth
going into. Larger vehicles seem monstrous by today's standards, but
by the standards of ships, or even aircraft, payloads of even the
biggest rockets are miniscule.

A 747-8 frieghter has a cargo capacity of 140 metric tons, compared to
the Delta IV heavy's 25.8 metric tons. The Battilus class supertanker
has a net tonnage of 225,473 metric tons.

The cost of a 747-8 is around $250 million and $8,000 per hour and 600
hours per year, and 20 year life cycle a total cost of $346 million,
with 100 missions per year for 20 years. 2000 missions of 140,000 kg.
. That's $1.46 per kg.

The cost of a Battilus was around $300 million. These tankers lasted
about 10 years and then they were scrapped. They did about 12 delivery
cycles per year and cost $30 million per year to run. So, they
delivered 120 cargos over their life at a total cost of $600 million.


Type fleet life mission demand
Rocket:: 20/year single use 10 minutes 140 tons/year
Aircraft: 1,656 20 years 10 hours 14 million
tons/year
Ship: 5,000 10 years 30 days 14,000 million
tons/year


x y ln(x) ln(y)
140 9844 4.941642423 9.194617412
14000000 1.46 16.45456789 0.378436436
14000000000 0.022 23.36232317 -3.816712826

On a ln-ln plot there is a slope of -0.7 -


Using off-the-shelf rocket technology and economizing construction,
while making the vehicle fully reusable, while also increasing the size
of the vehicle, could provide benefits if done carefully. So, one can
imagine a common element, say the space shuttle External Tank (ET)
redesigned to operate in clusters and return to Earth via glide back
landing. Six of these properly outfitted could loft 500,000 kg into
LEO. And at $500 million per vehicle, and 50 uses per vehicle, and $40
million recurring costs per launch, we have a total cost of $50 million
- or $100 per kg mission. 1/100th the price of the Delta IV heavy, and
10x the cost of an aircraft, and 5,000x the price of a container ship.


According to this there should be 3,500 tons per year to space at this
price and at 500 tons per flight, this adds up to 7 flights per year.
What would this be? A GW scale solar powersat, or a cluster of very
powerful many-to-many comsats orbiting in the same orbital plane.

.

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