Launch Costs

Al,

You are correct that currently there are not many
refuelable satellites. However, there is a market
there that is waiting to be tapped. This market has
been identified in the NASA Ascent study (available at
Futron's website) and the there are no less than 3
different projects (DART that recently failed, Orbital
Express, and the Aquarius project itself) that I know
of currently being funded by the DoD aimed at proving
this technology.

The point is that there is an emerging market that
studies done both internally and by NASA and Futron
that has shown that this is a significant growth area.

As for the 24 servicing, that can be handled by
smart placement of depots. One in LEO around 300-400
km for the DoD and NASA's CEV, another one in
2000-3000km range for those earth observers and then
you park some in an orbit that can be easily launched
to from Korou, Baikanour, and Sea Launch for GTO
refueling. You are right in that no single depot can
service all of our near earth needs.

As for ISS marketplace, currently they can allow
upto 12 dockings on the US side and 12 dockings on the
Russian side per year. Some of those are for human
craft but if you could stage cargo at a depot, you can
maximize the remaining dockings for the remaining
docking slots.

Assuming we can prove that in-space refueling is
feasible, we can extend the lifetime of LEO flyers by
10-20 years and be able to launch GEO birds dry. This
alone could provide a marketplace where hundreds of
metrics tons of fuel is needed to be launched on a
yearly basis. Add in a tens of metric tons of other
consumables like air and food for the ISS and space
tourists staying at Bigelow habitats and the like and
you got yourself a need for mass produced rockets like
Aquarius.

Ryan

--- Al Globus wrote: