Another mag lev approach

While launching a lot of small payloads might help the economics on the
launch side, I wonder how it would affect the economics in orbit.

If you are building something up there, in the beginning it all has to
be lifted, and the smaller the launch payload the more parts that have
to be joined in orbit. The larger the payload, the smaller the number of
parts that need to be joined.

Consider the ISS there will have been 40 assembly flights by the time
it's finished. So far that's involved 159 spacewalks for more than 1000
hours EVA.

If instead of 40 flights there had been 400 or 1000 flights (depending
on how small a payload you want to go to) that would have increased the
amount of on orbit construction required and most likely have increased
the number of hours EVA significantly. How much more expensive and time
consuming would that have made construction ?

Alternatively if a launcher the size of the Sea Dragon had ever been
made the ISS could have been launched in one flight (albeit in a
different configuration) which should have simplified construction and
made it less time consuming.

There is not much point in making launch cheap and frequent, if you are
going to end up making construction expensive and time consuming. It
should be possible to work out some kind of balance between launch and
orbital construction to keep the costs and construction time at a
reasonable level.

It should be considered a necessary consideration if wanting to build
something the size of a Satellite Solar Power Station, or a space hotel,
or a mining facility, all of which will be much larger than the ISS.

B

On 13/03/2012 05:42, Combs, Mike wrote: