MULE and Price Curves

The agreements with Russia have run out. Due to overcapacity in the
launch market, all of the providers are operating at very low profit
margins already.

On Tuesday, March 18, 2003, at 08:30 PM, jdr7181 wrote:

> --- In ssi_list@yahoogroups.com, "victoriatangoman"
> wrote:
> Will MULE development and use lead to cheaper access to space?
>
> Let's consider some launch providers. Russians have signed
> agreements with US State Department concerning price parity with US
> launch providers.
>
> So the main US providers are Boeing and Lockheed/Martin. Their Delta
> and Atlas rockets are used primarily by US Gov't Agencies.
>
> The question for Boeing and LockMart is if they reduce the cost of a
> launch by 25%, let's say that that is their profit margin, so now
> they're launching without any profit. The remaining 75% of the
> rocket cost is comprised of 50% fixed cost amortization and 25%
> variable cost.
>
> By lowering the cost can they expand their market by a factor of 2
> just to make exactly the same level of profit? For it to be worth
> their while the 25% price discount has to generate more than 2 times
> the business.
>
> Now with the lower price they have less slack with which to weather
> bad times, fund other ventures or R&D, etc.
>
> Will they give up the lucrative government business to take a flyer
> on expanding the commerical sector?
>
> I'm sure they'd be asking themselves what businesses are out there
> that don't currently launch anything into orbit but will initiate
> launch activities if the price is reduced by 25%.
>
> I'm not so sure that a MULE concept is going to lead the aerospace
> companies to lower their launch prices.
>
> TangoMan
> --- End forwarded message ---
>
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The materials in one asteroid (the largest ) are sufficient to make
orbital space colonies with ~500 times the surface area of the Earth in
usable real estate. See http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSettlement/
for details.

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

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
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