NASA should prioritize low $/kg

Forum: Spacesettlers
Thread: NASA should prioritize low $/kg

# 10810 bysailorbarsoom@... on July 9, 2008, 7:23 p.m.
Member since 2021-10-03

--- In spacesettlers, Ed Minchau wrote:

> This makes sense if your cargo vehicle accelerates
> at much higher rates than a people-mover could.
> Not too many people would want to sit atop a rocket
> doing 20 gees, but that wouldn't bother a fuel
> delivery to an orbital fuel depot. There's lots of
> electronics that can survive *thousands* of gees.

Hhhmmmnnn......
Is it a good rule of thumb that the higher the acceleration,
the cheaper the launch costs? I'd imagine that there are a
lot of things that could take twenty, fifty G's. As you say,
some potential cargoes could take hundreds or even thousands.

Perhaps we need TWO of those HLV's: one that operates in
the 15-to-30 G range, and another that operates at the
100-to-200 G range. And maybe a third that operates at
the 1,000-to-2,000 G range.