Here's how to get CATS for 20% of current price.

Just thought I'd sit down and do a first order costing approximation
on how to lower launch costs and see where it leads me. I haven't
figured this out yet because I'm writing this as I go, so at the end
this may all turn out to be an exercise in determining it can't
work. Be warned that this'll probbly be an exercise of meaningless
numbers coming to a conclusion.

Space tourism seems to me to be a ready market if we can hit the
right price points and generate enough volume. So how do we do it.

I'm going to rely a lot on my notes which I've gathered from various
sources with varying degrees of attribution. It's kind of a big
jumble broken into topics.

Let me break the question into two sceanrios: orbital and sub-
orbital technology. I'll leave the orbital question for another time
or for someone else.

Suborbital obviously requires a secondary means to cover the
remaining distance. I'm going to look into an orbiting tower. Here's
the proposal.

A 1,380 km long tower. Center of mass orbiting at 1,250 km, a
docking station at 260 km, and a low gravity section at 1,640 km.
From the docking station a winch is lowered to an altitude of 145 km
to intersect with a shuttle and then pulls the shuttle up to the
docking station.

What to build this out of. Spectra 1000 has a tensile strength of
3.0 GPa and a density of 0.97 g/cc but the Van Allen radiation belts
are going to make it pretty useless.

http://www.matweb.com/search/SpecificMaterial.asp?bassnum=PCF007

Spectra 2000 is an improvement.
http://www.spectrafiber.com/pdfs/hon-pf-ps10-sp2000.pdf

While we're awaiting the perfection of carbon nanotubes, we can
consider carbon fibers. Thornel Carbon Fiber T-40 has a density of
1.81 g/cc and a tensile strength of 5.65 GPa.

http://www.matweb.com/search/SpecificMaterial.asp?bassnum=ETHOR0

Taking into account a 2.4:1 safety factor, solar panels, electrical
cabling, counterwieght (10,000 tonnes), radiation shielding,
gondolas etc, the mass of material should be on the order of 15,500
metric tonnes. Of this about 2,800 tonnes should be carbon fiber.

How much will it cost?

First let me say that the study of optimization is very interesting
and leads down many paths. Very flowery isn't it? What I mean is
that rather than lifting all of that carbon fiber and counterweight
mass, it may be more efficient to send a probe to a NEO and bring
back liquid ammonia, liquid methane and water. Then build an orbital
Polyacrylonitrile plant. Disassociate the methane and ammonia into
constituent parts and reassemble as follows:

CH2=CHCH3 + NH3 + 3/2O2 --> CH2=CHCN +3H2O

This gives you acrylonitrile, the basic building block of PAN, or as
we know it, carbon fiber.

While you're at it bring back other mass which can be used for the
counterweight.

Is it worth it? I have no idea. But you see the benefit of having
some orbital infrastructure.

So let's assume you've got to lift all that mass into orbit.

Using the figures I have available to me:

The Proton 8K82K can lift 6,000 kg to a 1,500 km orbit at 63
degrees. If it could be launched from Kourou or Alcantara it could
get a boost in payload capacity. The cost of launch is $70 million.
It's probably lower than even that. Anyone have some good figures
for this?

So we need 2,583 launches at let's say $25,000,000 because of volume
discounts to the Chelomei Rocket Company. This should really boost
the Russian economy. Total price = $64.5 Billion.

Price of carbon fiber and fabrication: I have no clue. Anybody have
access to industry price lists. The stuff I get on the web is
consumer grade, small quantity carbon fiber, not aerospace grade,
high volume, high performance prices.

I found a reference to c.f. price per kg of $11 - $22 here:
http://www.hypercar.com/pdf/Hypercar_EVS19.pdf

Something else to consider; such a project is going to tax worldwide
carbon fiber capacity. It will consume 15% of worldwide output of
generic carbon fiber.

QUOTE
Over the past two years, we increased our installed capacity for
producing high-performance carbon fibers from 3.5 million pounds to
10.5 million pounds per year. That is about 25% of the total world
capacity.
END QUOTE
http://www.zoltek.com/company_information/history.shtml

So let's say it is $22/kg for the Thornel T-40. That amounts to
$61,600,000 and factoring in a fabrication cost multiple of 8x, we
get a wild assed guess of around $500,000,000.

Heck, let's just say the fabrication cost of the entire tower is $2
Billion.

Therefore, a launch cost of $64.5 Billion and a component cost of $2
Billion.

If we can launch twice a day, then we're looking at a 3 and a half
year construction schedule.

I know this is kind of disjointed, but I'm writing as it comes to me.

Back to the optimization alternative. We could first build a LEO
rotovator like I've mentioned in previous posts with a 15x-20x
mass:payload ratio which could then toss the payloads to our 1,250
km orbit. This would increase the capacity of the Proton rocket
payload to 21,000 kg to a 185 km orbit at 51.6 degrees, thus
reducing our total launches to 738.

The rotovator at a 20x mass ratio would mass at 21,000 kg x 20 = 420
tonnes. It would need an additional 20+ launches to assemble but
could reduce the total number of launches to the 1,250 km orbit. Of
course it would need dedicated supply and maintenance launches but
at this first cut it looks like a good bootstrapping strategy.
Doesn't it?

OK, I'm going with it, so I'm going to assume 25 launches to build
it and a maintenance/supply flight for every 20? launches. Thus
total launches are now

25 to build the rotovator
738 to build tower
37 to supply rotovator

Total 800 at $25 Million = $20 billion. Pretty damn good, huh. I
just shaved $44.5 Billion off of the project LOL :)))))

So now at 1 launch a day we're at 27 months of construction. Better.

Let's say the total cost of the project amounts to $30 Billion so as
to include carrying costs, administration, R&D, and other
incidentals.

Let's also say that the orbital hotel has a capacity for 932 guests.
Let's also assume that each guest, consumables and baggage masses at
225 kg.

If the Proton, or similar vehicle, becomes man rated, and we can
attach a passenger cabin how many people can we expect to launch?

Well if we can increase payload capacity by 400% to a suborbital
rendevous, then a Proton variant can launch 105,000 kg to an
altitude of 145 km. This means that 466 people, supplies etc can be
launched at once for $25 Million. That works out to be a ticket
price of $53,500, and a price of $238/kg.

If we assume a 3 day stay, then we have a yearly guest total at the
orbital hotel of 113,400. How much will they pay?

Let's say the $30 Billion is amortized over a 10 year period at a
rate of 18% then just the construction cost amounts to $57,200 per
guest. Factor in operating expenses (guests are already bring their
own consumables) and profit, so we charge the guests $146,500.

Total ticket price of $200,000 per person for a 3 day stay.

With a market of 113,400 passengers per year and a launch revenue of
$6.1 Billion, I'm sure aerospace companies will be interested in
developing a suborbital shuttle that can match the price/performance
of a Proton ( and be able to land the passengers back on Earth :)

Now we can also count on ancillary revenue. No longer will LEO and
GSO launches be competitive. Everything can go via the suborbital
route, dock with the tower, climb to the top and cast off with
rocket assist if necessary. How much revenue will this add? Also,
bootstrapping into other ventures is now more feasible because . . .

We've lowered the the launch cost to 20% of current market prices
without any new advances in technology! I've just decided that this
is going to be the title of this post.

Finished. What a way to spend a rainy afternoon.

TangoMan