Launch Costs

On Mon, 19 May 2003, Al Globus wrote:

> But much of that cost is driven by the cost of launch. Basically,
> everything has to be a light as possible and there are no repairmen.
> Both are a consequence of launch cost and safety. Designing things to
> be small and light is expensive. Simple example, you need expensive
> rad hard electronics because you can't afford to simply put them inside
> of a bunch of lead for shielding. No repairman means everything needs
> to be extremely reliable and redundant - meaning expensive. If
> transportation to orbit were cheap and reliable, you could have
> repairmen.
>
Yes, that is true - and there's a bit of a bleeding-edge
zero-margin-for-error approach in the space business that drives up
costs all over the board in this sort of fashion. But still, you're
talking about an enormous cost reduction to make routine repairs
economically sensible - these things are still going to be operating
away from easy access for years at a time, and they really do need
to be pretty reliable...

But I agree that cheaper launches really wouldn't hurt, and might help
a lot.

>
> Al Globus
> CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
> http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html
>

By the way Al, I'm coming to San Jose for ISDC this weekend - will you
be there? We're supposed to get a tour of NASA Ames Friday morning...

Arthur