A lobbying window of opportunity

Forum: SSI-List
Thread: A lobbying window of opportunity

# 18165 byIan Woollard on Sept. 5, 2003, 4:15 p.m.
Member since 2022-08-22

Hoiw do you get volume to reduce costs for getting into space using current
technology?
The standard rule of thumb is that the cost of vehicle goes down by 15% for each doubling in the production rate.
This was broken down several times into cost of fuel (actually pennies)
hardware and support technitions.
Try "technicians". Yes but the number of technicians (aka "standing army") needed doesn't scale up proportional to the launch rate; nothing like; and that's where most of the cost goes. At the moment we are stuck in a low launch rate regime, and that keeps the launch price high.
Granted that perhaps you could get some reduction in the cost of technitions
"technicians"
by amortizing salaries over more frequent launches, but to what point? Lower cost -> bigger market -> higher launch rate -> lower cost? Lather, rinse, repeat.
Bottom line, using anything like our present system can't get down to the
cost of a commercial airliner in transport costs without cutting big stuff
somewhere,,,, and what would that be? People/technitions? exotic system?
"technicians"

We don't need to get down to the commerical airliner cost, we just need to get down to the point where the launch rate goes up enough that we get decreasing price over time due to ever higher launch volume. If people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get into space, plenty of people certainly will. That kind of price appears to be entirely reasonable.