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Whither are flights at $100/lb?
Clark Lindsey touched some nerves at Hobbyspace with his post on flights at $100/lb. I think we all agree that costs are high now and that in some rosy future with high demand, mass production, high utilization rates, R&D amortized over many units, continuous improvement from families of commercial rockets developed by the same team and other kinds of standard obtanium can get the price down to some single digit multiple of the fuel cost. It probably won't be 3 like aircraft, but even if it's 9, that's only $180/lb at current fuel prices. The questions are, "How?" and "How soon?" There are a variety of ways to increase utilization. The one economists favor is firms that can't cover costs going out of business so that the ones that can increase their utilization. For that, we need to get all the governments out of the subsidized rocket business. Another is to really grow demand. I am working on that one. For "How soon?", we appear to be a factor of 20 away from $100/lb. If Elon makes $500/lb by 2010 then we will be a factor of 5 away. If improvements continue at that pace, we might see $100/lb in 2015. Others will say we won't see those prices for 300 years. The latter seems moot to me. At $500/lb, that is $100,000 to deliver 200lbs to orbit. That looks to me like a price point that would support millions of tourists even if no further improvements in technology are made. Of course, millions of tourists is inconsistent with low utilization and low flight rates that are required to justify high capital costs. (If you throw in ejections seats, non-recyclables and so on, you can still get a week in orbit for much less than the millions that is the current conventional wisdom for the early retail prices). There is the possibility of a disruptive technology getting us to skip to an interesting future. E.g., a space elevator at $100/lb. would grow demand for rocket propulsion at geo-synch, on the Moon, in LEO, lunar orbit and lots of other places that become accessible for a cheap outgoing trip. Posted by Sam Dinkin at August 03, 2005 05:49 AM

Comments

If you want to apply some semi-serious numerology, try determining the exponent in the experience curve for launchers. This empirical law says that the cost for producing the n-th unit is proportional to n^a for some exponent a (a

IIRC, historically for aeronautics a is typically around -.2, which isn't terribly good.

Posted by Paul Dietz at August 3, 2005 06:07 AM

That got mangled (a less-than sign being interpreted as html). The missing part was (a is negative).

Posted by Paul Dietz at August 3, 2005 06:09 AM

Paul, for future reference, a < sign is displayed in HTML as &lt;. Greater-than is the same thing except with a "gt".

Posted by Rand Simberg at August 3, 2005 10:00 AM

"Another is to really grow demand."

At least if you believe the NASA stats, commercial demand won't grow in any important way until the payload price goes below $1000/kg.

Thankfully it doesn't take much to out-imagine NASA. Other than property rights, what did you have in mind to boost demand at current prices?

With regard to property rights, people get sentimental about the Moon, don't want to think of it being carved up and spoiled. But asteroids are a different story, and much more of a commercial proposition... Do you think there is a legal approach that could succeed here? Finders keepers for asteroids?

Posted by Kevin Parkin at August 3, 2005 09:23 PM

Asteroid property rights won't matter if it is more expensive to mine them than to mine the Earth. Asteroids will be owned, but that won't mean anything for space if they aren't used/usable.

Posted by Paul at August 4, 2005 07:15 AM

Thankfully it doesn't take much to out-imagine NASA. Other than property rights, what did you have in mind to boost demand at current prices?

Demand is naturally increasing IMHO. For example, space tourism is growing. With continued miniaturization of electronics, we'll see new applications that are feasible to put in space. And the launch costs are steadily decreasing.

Asteroid property rights won't matter if it is more expensive to mine them than to mine the Earth. Asteroids will be owned, but that won't mean anything for space if they aren't used/usable.

But are they more expensive to get to orbit? Another possibility is to move them to Earth's surface (maybe crash them in a remote region of Australia or Siberia) and mine them in place.

Posted by Karl Hallowell at August 5, 2005 10:19 AM

Asteroid property rights won't matter if it is more expensive to mine them than to mine the Earth. Asteroids will be owned, but that won't mean anything for space if they aren't used/usable.

As soon as something is owned, it can be bought/sold, and real money can be made from it, even before the technology is there properly to exploit it.

Company A launches a cheap-and-cheerful probe for (say) $20M to land on an M-type NEO and carry out a basic mineral assay. The results show high concentrations of platinum group metals. Company then claims the asteroid, and the claim is recognised. They then sell 50% of the mining rights for the NEO to Company B for (say) $50M. The nominal market value of the resource is orders of magnitude bigger than that, but Company A is still making a healthy profit, which they can re-invest in more survey probes, developing asteroid mining technology etc. The closer the technology gets to being viable, the greater the value of the assets will be.

Posted by DL at August 6, 2005 02:29 AM


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