Some thoughts from Sam Dinkin over at The Space Review, with a plug for the Kickstarter, which has slowed since the burst last week. About half way to the goal, with a little over half the time left. Spread the word, at Facebook and other places, if you haven’t already.
4 thoughts on “How Much Money Would It Take To Launch Free Enterprise Into Space?”
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I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that shameless promotion is your friend. See if you can get one of the usual suspects to decry your Kickstarter as dangerous, evil, or wrong.
From where would 9 launches per day even take place to get towards the 3,000+ launches per year in Sam’s article?
It’s more of a rhetorical question, but also the kind of thing around which I can’t even start to wrap my head. I suppose that’s part and parcel with the idea of having space launches become as regular and routine as airline flights?
It seems that a large part of what makes on-orbit assembly possible in Star Trek (besides the ludicrous idea of an egalitarian society that, in Star Trek into Darkness at least, doesn’t actually seem to exist as per original Star Trek canon) is the use of ion drives and other non-chemical propulsion to lift crew and materials up to their space dock assembly points. Is that sort of technology more of a enterprise generator than chemical rocket reusability?
Of course, in a world where artificial gravity on spaceships is a thing, I suppose antigravity is also a thing, so it’s a moot-ish point.
With full reuse of at least first stage, I can imagine some future variant of Falcon doing it from multiple sites. Gwynne told me a couple years ago that she wanted to have several worldwide sites.
How much money would it take?
Free enterprise happens with two conditions. People are there. Those people have the resources to pursue their individual dreams.
The hurdle is getting free people there. We should consider it an investment in our future. 5 FH launches every 26 months would do it. First to presupply a site with cargo. Then to send 10 colonists each launch window. Something like MCT reduces the cost per seat from $100m to $5m… Sending 100 people per window for less overall cost.
Only one thing is required for people to have the resources to pursue their dreams. Transportation for colonists must include a personal mass allotment. The more it costs to transport them, the more that allotment is worth.
Many factors can reduce the per person ticket price, but the most immediate is to send more people at a time. Doing just that we could get the price to mars down to about $5m/seat.
Is a new industrial planet worth 3% of NASA’s annual budget?