A day in Space, Lets get a tank now

Fixed launch costs are your biggest expense. .. and that's the cost of
booster and fuel for the push to orbit. Once that's out of the way your
operational costs are comparatively nill.... your just coasting around
awaiting reentry. So , in one way , you could extend the trip to several
days or a week or even longer. The only added cost would be life support,
i.e. water air food and electrical power (for scrubbers) and payroll for
ground support

The space vehicle at rest would be using up the least amount of "life"; in
launches and orbits with the temp differences every orbit are what wear it
down, micro dust pitting skin, stresses and flexes in materials/frame during
launch and re entry. So by shortening the actual flight, it could extend
operational lifespan of many components meaning longer time to amortise the
base vehicle cost.

Shorter flights also mean more flights per year or what ever time frame you
measure. More flights mean more revenue from base expenses.

So you have three graphs; one a big spike for the umph to get it up, and
another gradual sloping which is the amortization of capital costs and
another representing the deminishing returns from the original charge per
seat.

At what point will a client put in play their Dollar lottery ticket? A two
hour experience of a earth sunrise and sunset before reentry? A week where
they get upon each others nerves for being cooped up in a 16 ft diameter
cylinder with growing "smells", floating assortment of food particles/
crumbs, hair, sneeze remnents, etc. (pretty graphic huh, remember the air
filters are dealing with 50 people, not half dozen like in ISS ;-) ?
Perhaps a day would be enough...anyone that gets "forced" into the flight by
friends and family can tuff it out a day. The psycological stress could be
managed as well as physical endurance. Old Tito claimed the experience,
although exilerating in many ways, was also fatiguing. The South African
admited to be apprehensive on the lift-off (with good reason , hehe). How
long can you put on the brave face if your bowls just arent cooperating and
your inner ear is just too wacked out. ?

Trying to reduce costs by lessing the trip we saw really wont work too much.
There wouldnt be any real way to reduce the biggest cost per seat by making
the trip shorter. Of course the longer the stay, the greater opportunities
for mishaps, an errant meteor or space debry, solar flare frying your bod
(even if you are within van allen belt), bad seal leaking, etc.

Anyone ever wish when they were a kid to ride for ever on a roller coaster?
Ever get your wish? Kinda got blase didnt it? How about fly in an jet?
Excess of anything get too much. The old axiom "leave them wanting more"
hold true.

Again about the shuttles fuel tank... actually Congress has heard your
private request and has made it mandatory to allow any private entity to use
the spent hardware, free! But again, remember what was in it? ... To clean
it out enough to use, and other considerations just isn't worth it. Whats
the cost per hour of a cleaning lady in Space?

Imagine trying to save a paper water-cooler triangle cup.... If you just
leave water in it too long it gets water logged and mushy. The shuttle tank
was designed to be as lite as possible. You know why its rust colored?
Didn't want the added weight of heavy good paint. At one time I figured,
gosh, it's already up there, piggy backed along , why not bolt them together
into a torus ring, cheap space station :-) It wont work... they would have
to redo the structure and make it stronger and more "everything"...which is
contrary to the original disposable design.

The reason that the Ruskies had a bit of an advantage is that they did not
have congressional appropriators looking to get jobs for the constituents
back home. So to make it fly, you gotta spread the expenditure all over
creation to make sure everyone gets a little piece so they vote it in. Sigh,
Thats one good thing about a dictatorship, hehe, no worries about
constituents (oops can you say crash of the Kremlin, you can't win for
losing)