Moores law for space development?

bill t wrote:

> The method I like to use for a mature industry is the 4 x energy cost.
> The air transport industry is close to this, the trucking industry in
> North America uses this as a rule of thumb.

Clearly space isn't a mature industry.

> So what is the cost of fuel to send a shuttle up?

Off hand I think it is less than 1% of the current
cost to launch (between $500 million and $1.5
billion depending on what you count.) And the space
shuttle uses relatively expensive fuel.

Fuel costs to send something into space uses about
seven times its own mass in fuel. We are not
talking ridiculous underlying costs. Airline
costs are by no means inconceivable.

The big costs at the moment is the ~10,000 people
necessary to launch a manned rocket. This compares
to 10-15 (fifteen) people for some ICBMs.

Admittedly ICBMs are suborbital, but still...