The Space Review is up (a little late–it’s usually available first thing Monday morning, but Jeff is probably recovering from his trip to New Mexico), and it has a couple interesting articles. The first one describes the benefits of amateur efforts toward space settlement. The second one is a relook at the economics of O”Neill’s Island One space habitat. It’s nonsensical, because the author doesn’t understand much about the economics of space launch. Let’s start with this:
O’Neill’s expectations about launch costs (like those of other 1970s-era prophets of space development) proved to be highly optimistic, even given the disagreement about how these are to be calculated. A $10,000 a pound ($22,000 per kilogram) Earth-to-LEO price, almost twenty-five times the estimate O’Neill worked with, is considered the reasonable optimum now.
Considered so by whom? Not by ULA. Not by the Russians. Not by SpaceX. The only launch vehicle that has launch costs that high is the Shuttle, and that’s because it flies so seldom that its per-flight cost is on the order of a billion dollars. In a due-east launch, it can get close to sixty thousand pounds to LEO, and if it cost six hundred million per flight (as it did before Columbia, when the flight rate was higher), that would be about ten thousand bucks a pound. But to call this “optimum” is lunacy. Other existing launchers are going for a couple thousand a pound (the Russians are less based on price, but its not clear what their costs are, and if they’re making money). SpaceX is projecting its price for Falcon 9 to be about forty million, to deliver almost thirty thousand pounds to LEO, so that’s a little over a thousand per pound. And that’s without reusing any hardware.
But even these are hardly “optimum.” The true price drops will come from high flight rates of fully-reusable space transports, and there’s no physical reason that these couldn’t deliver payload for on the order of a hundred dollars per pound or less.
Of course we aren’t going to build HLVs for space colonies, as Gerry O’Neill proposed. If it happens, it will happen when the price does come down, as a result of other markets. But if the point is that Island One is unaffordable at current launch costs, it’s a trivial one–most intelligent observers realize that. But it’s ridiculous to think that lower launch costs can’t be achieved, or even that his stated number has any basis in reality.
umm… did you mean “there’s no physical reason that these couldn’t deliver payload for on the order of a hundred dollars per pound or less.”?
Yes, that’s what I meant.
I guess the guy never read the paper:
A Rocket a Day
Keeps the High Costs Away
by John Walker
September 27, 1993
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/rocketaday.html
Much nonsence passed around as fact where space launch costs are concerned. Very very little understanding of economics and economies of scale.
Right now R&D and facilities overhead dominate launch costs per flight. Not surprising given developing launchers generally costs a couple billion (give or take a order of magnitude depending no if you
Kelly, that’s a great article and I hadn’t seen it before. Thanks.
It comes to mind that I’d rather the government purchase 70 such programs, one right after the other, until it works, than have bought AIG.
Wouldn’t the optimum price per pound launched be zero dollars, anyway? (Or, hey, negative infinity dollars, while we’re at it! I’m fine with that, so long as I get my cut, even if it’s an infinitesimal cut.)
Give Elhefnawy credit though — he envisions “a world GDP three, four, or five times as large as what we have today”, and the possibility of cutting SSP construction costs considerably, and boldly announces that even a $10 trillion investment shouldn’t be that intimidating in the longer run. If it turns out that sustainable energy supply is the bottleneck problem in making a developed-world existence possible for virtually, you’ve really got a case.
… make that “virtually all” …
> Brock wrote:
>
> Kelly, that’s a great article and I hadn’t seen it before. Thanks.
Glad to pass it on. And yes its a damn good article. The potential for $333 /Kg launch costs for little better then WW-II tech is sobering.
> Michael Turner wrote:
>
> Give Elhefnawy credit though — he envisions “a world GDP three, four,
> or five times as large as what we have today”,==
Thats about as visionary as predicting tomorrow the sun will rise.
>== even a $10 trillion investment shouldn’t be that intimidating in the
> longer run. ..
Except of course there are lots of cheeper competitors. So that $10 T — likely not the first thing the world will rush to cut a check for.
Great paper Kelly; I loved this:
“And rocket engines are finicky, complicated, and intolerant of defects. Well, yes…but so is a DOHC 4 valve per cylinder turbocharged, intercooled V-8 internal combustion engine, and nonetheless one can purchase such an engine, integrated into a ground transportation vehicle, from a number of manufacturers at a cost three orders of magnitude less than that charged for the rocket, and expect it to function without catastrophic failures or extensive maintenance, for five years, tens of thousands of kilometers, and thousands of mission cycles.”
One question; what’s no-no about a sack of gravel??
“DOHC 4 valve per cylinder turbocharged, intercooled V-8 internal combustion engine, and nonetheless one can purchase such an engine,integrated into a ground transportation vehicle, from a number of manufacturers at a cost three orders of magnitude less than that charged for the rocket, and expect it to function without catastrophic failures or extensive maintenance, for five years, tens of thousands of kilometers, and thousands of mission cycles”
Fallacy. It doesn’t have the power density of a rocket engine
> Curt Thomson wrote:
> Great paper Kelly;
Thanks
> I loved this:
>
> “And rocket engines are finicky, complicated, and intolerant of
> defects. Well, yes…but so is a DOHC 4 valve per cylinder turbocharged,
> intercooled V-8 internal combustion engine, ==
Yes, rocket engnies are much more complex then a car engine, but yuo sell millions of car enginse a year – but only tens of rocket engines.
The dark side of economies of scale.
😉
> One question; what’s no-no about a sack of gravel??
Oh the “Payloads delivered to the Rocket Garage are inspected to ensure they are not nuclear bombs, sacks of gravel, or otherwise unacceptable.” line?
The problem is if a bag of gravel – or sand, is put into a east > west orbit. It will whipe out everything in a contradictory normal west > east orbit.
Rand, I think you missed the point of the article. Remember Elhefnawy’s reevaluating O’Neill’s specific proposal. Elhefnawy is not claiming that launch costs will never, ever, for all time to come fall below $10K/lb. He’s simply pointing out that the best that the launch system O’Neill specified, derived from Shuttle technology, could do is $10K/lb. In retrospect, that seems like an entirely reasonable assessment.
From Kelly Starks: “Note: similar experts assured folks the Xprize couldn
Elhefnawy is not claiming that launch costs will never, ever, for all time to come fall below $10K/lb.
I didn’t say he was.
He’s simply pointing out that the best that the launch system O’Neill specified, derived from Shuttle technology, could do is $10K/lb. In retrospect, that seems like an entirely reasonable assessment.
I disagree with that reading of his piece. It’s not how I read, or read (different pronunciation) it.
But if that interpretation is correct, then there isn’t much point to his article. It provides zero useful information about the economic viability of space colonies, since they are not going to be built with Shuttle-derived vehicles.
> Jim Davis wrote:
>> From Kelly Starks: “Note: similar experts assured folks the Xprize
>> couldn
> Rand Simberg wrote:
>=== there isn’t much point to his article. It provides zero useful
> information about the economic viability of space colonies, since
> they are not going to be built with Shuttle-derived vehicles.
Well the O’Neil proposal was that they would be. You could build them with that, but but at this point in time derivied might need to be specified. I have a nice little Biamese streached, reengined orbiter concept I might propose if yuo have a couple billion.
😉
That could do the flight rate, and with that flight to deliver millions of tons up – cost per pound could be down to … high tens of dollars a pound.
Frankly I’ld try to by a couple star-rakers,
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/staraker.htm
but thats just me.
😉