Marginal Launch Costs For Reusable Vehicles

I’m writing a paper that contains the following sentence: “Current reusable suborbital providers, such as XCOR Aerospace, Virgin Galactic, or Armadillo Aerospace, are likely to expand their performance envelopes into orbit over the next 10 to 15 years, driving prices down much closer to the marginal cost of propellant, which means potential prices of less than $100 per pound of payload to LEO.”

Can anyone find me a citation to substantiate this statement? I don’t really want to show my work in this document.

[Late evening update]

Ummmmm…folks in comments?

This is all fun, but I don’t need the argument — I know the argument. I need a citation of someone at least semi-credible who has made it, somewhere else.

Good Night, Moonshot

Matt Welch has some thoughts on the mission creep of the “If we can put a man on the moon” analogy. It’s also an introduction to this month’s issue of Reason magazine, which is focused on space. It’s on the stands and in the mail now, and other pieces in it, including my own, and contributions from Greg Benford and Bob Zubrin, will be going on line over the next couple weeks.

[Update a while later]

I have some related thoughts over at Open Market.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!