Fusion Propulsion Question

Ian Woollard wrote,

"I believe that aerospace companies are deliberately not going for them,
because
they believe (quite incorrectly) that they would lose profit if Space is
seen as low tech; and make no mistakes, low tech, not high performance is
what is needed to reach the final frontier."

I have an alternative, non-conspiracy explanation. The last figures I
saw said that space launch services is approximately a $7 billion dollar
industry per year (space as a whole is $60 billion or so). Major
aerospace developments are expensive: recall that Boeing spent $6 billion
to develop the 777 aircraft, and that the 777
* Does not go into space
* Is the n+1 st example of a commercial passenger jet, where n is quite
large
* Was designed 30 years after the 747, which Boeing also designed

The question is, what rational economic actor would spend $6 billion to
develop a new launcher rocket, if the market as a whole is only $7 billion
per year, and there is no guarantee that any one company could capture
even $6 billion of it? To justify to lenders that building such a
vehicle would be worthwhile, the company would have to invoke the
elasticity argument: if we build it, then the market will get much
bigger and we'll eventually make a profit. That's a tough sell.

Accordingly, I don't think we'll see any $6 billion efforts to develop
launchers any time soon. We'll see $200 million efforts, but $200
million probably won't build for us a launcher that will revolutionize
Earth-to-LEO travel.

We have to wait, unfortunately. The market is steadily growing, and that
is encouraging. As the market grows, the amount of money companies will
be willing to invest in launcher technology will slowly rise. As rockets
get more efficient, the market will continue to grow. Etc. But
probably no revolution is in the offing.

That's my take.

Ron
******

Ian Woollard
01/10/02 06:37 PM
Please respond to spacesettlers

To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
cc:
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Fusion Propulsion Question

victoriatangoman wrote:

> Other than rail lauched or skyhook/sub-orbital shuttle, what else

> other than trying to eek out more performace from chemical launch

> (metallic hydrogen/metallic oxygen?)

Space Elevators.

But I think you are a little premature in excluding chemical launch
vehicles. The underlying cost of a chemical vehicle is way down at
a few 10s of dollars per kg; if you are able to launch often enough.

I've seen several designs for rockets that are down at $500/kg,
some of them have been costed and checked over. I believe that
aerospace companies are deliberately not going for them, because
they believe (quite incorrectly) that they would lose profit if
Space is seen as low tech; and make no mistakes, low tech, not high
performance is what is needed to reach the final frontier.

> I'm assuming spectroscopy of the
> exhaust would show a strong helium presence. There wouldn't be any
> radioactivity.

> Or the temperature of the exhaust?

It would be blindingly obvious. Literally. The exhaust would be

unbelieveably hot; the UV would be staggering. Even mixing it down

it would be obvious what the power source was; the helium and remaining

hydrogen is a total giveaway, you'd get other trace elements and
isotopes; very unusual ones I expect.

> Thanks

np.

--
- Ian Woollard (ian.woollard@...)

"Is a planetary surface the right place for an expanding
technological civilization?"
- Gerard O'Neill