Space Travel and Economies of Scale

[asnys]

Space travel costs too much. I think we can all agree on this.

An argument I've seen around the internet is that a big part of the problem with space access costs is scale: there's just not enough demand for launch services to generate economies of scale, either by mass-producing cheap launch vehicles or by building larger launch vehicles (like Sea Dragon) or some combination of the two. What we really need, the argument runs, to bring the cost down is some organization - presumably the government - with the need to send a lot of payload into orbit, enough to justify cranking out launch vehicles like sausages.

Lacking the expertise to evaluate this idea myself, I thought I'd ask y'all: do you think this would actually work? And, if it would, what missions would both require enough launches to do the job, but would still be even theoretically politically feasible? Some kind of gold-plated orbital ABM system is the only thing that comes to mind, but maybe someone else has a better idea.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Oneills space colonization buillding solar powersats from lunar resources would work.

Of course, they would surely find that the costs were far higher than expected, but they might get the needed infrastructure, like moon mines and cheap launchers in place first.

Option 2(asb) discover something on mars worth getting a base there. See stirlings books, or ryk spoors threshhold.

Option 3, the dotcomm buble lasts a cuple of years longer, and several hundred leo comsats are launched

4 space based solar shields to combat global warming

5 some zero g manufacturing scheme proves to be viable .. like lead.lithium crystals are room temperature superconductors asb?

 

[ANTIcarrot]

Space travel costs too much. I think we can all agree on this.

NASA spends $150-$170 billion dollars on spaceflight every decade. Even $50B spent on reducing costs to 1/10th the current value would yield savings extremely quickly. So why isn't this done?

The problem is the Apollo Space Programme: the worst thing to ever happen to NASA. Apollo funding was deliberately spread around as widely as possible, so everyone got some pork, and there would be a large voting block in the US government against cancelling it. That policy got America to the moon. It also cemented in America's mindset that spacetravel has to be big and expensive.

It's been possible to significantly reduce space launch cost since around 1965. The technology and engineering was there. But a required step of doing that woudl inevitable be that you had to stop buying that old hardware, and all that pork would dry up. This is not politically viable.

This is why NASA has been stuck with the LC39 apollo launch infrastructure for 50 years. This is why NASA will only consider shuttle replacements that require the LC39 complex. This is why professionals who work at and with NASA cannot imagine NASA working without continuing to use rusting crumbling apollo era launch technology.
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=27918.0

At this point NASA is a airship company that has two Hindenburgs under its belt, and has carefully selected its senior management for the belief that practical heavier than air flight is impossible, and has been reporting to congress for 40 years that anyone who claims otherwise is sadly mistaken.

 

[Garrison]

NASA spends $150-$170 billion dollars on spaceflight every decade. Even $50B spent on reducing costs to 1/10th the current value would yield savings extremely quickly. So why isn't this done?

Well it is to a degree, COTS and CCDev are both aimed at getting more bang for the NASA buck and the Likes of SpaceX and Reaction Engines have bring cost per Kilo down as key goals.The Falcon 9 Heavy is intended to launch 53 tonnes for $85-125 million dollars a time

 

[ccdsah]

I think we first need to really unify Earth and learn to feed all humans, before venturing into space. Too bad communism was perfect for robots, bot humans. That could have been an ideology perfect for unification, human race is too egoistical for that...

 

[Garrison]

I think we first need to really unify Earth and learn to feed all humans, before venturing into space. Too bad communism was perfect for robots, bot humans. That could have been an ideology perfect for unification, human race is too egoistical for that...

NASA, probably the best funded of all the various space agencies, gets less than 0.5% of the Federal Budget, social programs and the military each get at least 20 times that. If you are looking for ways to fix the problems on Earth I suggest you look elsewhere.

 

[asnys]

I think we first need to really unify Earth and learn to feed all humans, before venturing into space. Too bad communism was perfect for robots, bot humans. That could have been an ideology perfect for unification, human race is too egoistical for that...

I'm not talking about setting up Mars colonies or anything like that. I'm just thinking about getting launch costs down to a few hundred dollars per kg instead of a few thousand, so that it might be cost-effective to do things like, I dunno, orbital manufacturing, or a lunar scientific outpost. Things that would (hopefully) benefit people on Earth.

 

[Michel Van]

the problem is more of Political nature
Sea Dragon was ground braking in cost reduction and radical new ideas
the NASA administration had to check the number twice to belief them.
Also made the USAF study in modular low cost Launcher who used pressure fed engine and new cheap constitution methods.
they came to conclusion that could launch 60~30 tons for low price around 100~20 million dollar(2012)

Why they never used ?
Economies was never a option on Saturn rocket program
it had to bring 3 men to moon, no matter how much it costs: it has to work !
so was run the entire Apollo program with result budget overrun
because of this President Johnson start to Kill the Apollo program by shutting down the Saturn V production in 1968
next President Nixon buried the Apollo program, also all Plans for Mars or big infrastructure around Earth
so no need for Big Dumb Booster like Sea Dragon with 450 tons of payload

NASA promise launch re-usable Space Shuttle for US$18 Million Dollar(2012) each week !
so Nixon takes this as option
then USAF join them and Space Shuttle mutated into a monster of of launch system
so there modular low cost booster died quietly
to keep the Shuttle R&D cost down, they take the cheapest design with highest maintenance costs, so was the STS born.
thanks to US congress and Senate how keep the budget low and threaten to chancel the STS program (almost happened)
but 50 launch in year, it became only 5 a year and launch cost rise US$450 Million Dollar(2012)
next to that the cheap design killed 16 people!

I think the USAF modular low cost rocket had be much better, only if Nixon had taken that option...

 

[MattII]

Maybe if the US had been less heavy handed with their regulation things might be running better now in regards to the technology.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

The problem is a certain angelism of private stuff too. An obsession wit cutting costs and profits may have a dark cost like lower security rules, and catastrophes. There is a need for state based regulations and watching.

And maybe there is, as much as a nerd I am, more pressing issues than space.

 

[Polish Eagle]

Space travel costs too much. I think we can all agree on this.

An argument I've seen around the internet is that a big part of the problem with space access costs is scale: there's just not enough demand for launch services to generate economies of scale, either by mass-producing cheap launch vehicles or by building larger launch vehicles (like Sea Dragon) or some combination of the two. What we really need, the argument runs, to bring the cost down is some organization - presumably the government - with the need to send a lot of payload into orbit, enough to justify cranking out launch vehicles like sausages.

Lacking the expertise to evaluate this idea myself, I thought I'd ask y'all: do you think this would actually work? And, if it would, what missions would both require enough launches to do the job, but would still be even theoretically politically feasible? Some kind of gold-plated orbital ABM system is the only thing that comes to mind, but maybe someone else has a better idea.

Unless you have a specific past concept to discuss here, this might belong more in FH or the off-topics.

Anyway, an ABM is one way. A space-based solar power system is another. Both would use dozens of launches per year--combined with a simple launcher design, this could reduce costs greatly.

An alternative is Zubrin's "Trans-Orbital Railway" proposal, by which the government buys a certain amount of tonnage-to-LEO and sells it at low costs to private buyers, i.e. the government buys a rocket and sells berths on it to the private sector at 1/10 the cost, so, effectively, the government pays for 90% of the launch cost for any given payload. The theory behind this plan is that it would jumpstart the creation of a space-based economic sector that didn't exist before, and thus pay for itself after a given period of time in the creation of a new economic sector. For example, if the subsidy allows the creation of a Space Based Solar Power market where previously there was none, then the subsidy will have paid for itself through the creation of this (hopefully self-sustaining) industry that employs some tens of thousands of people and provides some ancillary benefit (national security, environmental friendliness, etc).

Alternatively, one can just have a single state-produced launcher that handles basically every payload imaginable and even launches foreign payloads, as the Russians did with their R-7 family. Launch costs are relatively low because a dozen of this rocket are made per year. This is what the Shuttle was also supposed to be, but it was just too complex a vehicle to do this sort of work.

The real trick is to build one launch vehicle and fly it often. Reusability can be a plus, but only if reuse is actually cheaper than building a new expendable husk. With luck, maybe Reaction Engines Ltd. or SpaceX can achieve this. As an American, I'd prefer the latter. As someone with a sense of aesthetics, I'd prefer the former. Those damnable wings...they'll break your heart every time, but you'll keep coming back for more, hoping that, maybe this time, the Space Plane will happen.

 

[MattII]

The problem is a certain angelism of private stuff too. An obsession wit cutting costs and profits may have a dark cost like lower security rules, and catastrophes. There is a need for state based regulations and watching.

So private aerospace manufacturers are impossible then? better tell that to SpaceX.

And maybe there is, as much as a nerd I am, more pressing issues than space.

Of course there is, why do you think NASA gets less than 1% of the Federal Budget? Of course, in 2011 that amounted to about 35% of the total academic scientific research spending, but with NASA then riding at 0.53% of the federal budget, academic scientific research amounted to just slightly over 1.5% of the budget.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Alternatively, one can just have a single state-produced launcher that handles basically every payload imaginable and even launches foreign payloads, as the Russians did with their R-7 family. Launch costs are relatively low because a dozen of this rocket are made per year.

Except, of course, that the Soviets/Russians DON'T just have one system. They have the Proton, Zenit, Rokot, etc., etc.

OTOH, they got cheap Soyuz's by having bad satellites. They had to keep replacing them, which meant lots of launches. The US satellites lasted longer, so you never quite got the economies of scale.

And of course, the Shuttle was a total boondoggle.

 

[SAVORYapple]

So private aerospace manufacturers are impossible then? better tell that to SpaceX.

I'm surprised that Lockeed Martin and Boeing are BOTH not lobbying Congress to shut down the COTS program and bankrupt SpaceX. After all, the Falcon 9 is going to take away business from the EELVs once they are proven to work.

 

[PMN1]

NASA, probably the best funded of all the various space agencies, gets less than 0.5% of the Federal Budget, social programs and the military each get at least 20 times that. If you are looking for ways to fix the problems on Earth I suggest you look elsewhere.

Indeed, people have a strange set of priorities, fingers are pointed government for wasting their tax money in space instead of helping the poor, but they are not feeling guilty for their own scale of priorities. According to 2005 reports, in the US alone last year $976.3 billion dollars was spent on pets, toys, gambling, alcohol and tobacco. It is 63 times the amount spent on space exploration.

 

[Puget Sound]

But why is there no demand? Because there is nothing there to motivate demand. Mars is not like earth, so you can't colonize it. The moon is likewise useless. The best bet would be other solar systems, but you'd need something like a warp engine from Star Trek to reach them. So there won't be demand until someone invents the warp drive.

Umm, there's NEO asteroid mining (which would actually be fairly cheap once you have sub-$1000 per pound rockets- so something like the Falcon Heavy) or space-based manufacturing for certain medicines and other valuable stuff that you can only make in zero gravity, among other things.

 

[Aelita]

So private aerospace manufacturers are impossible then? better tell that to SpaceX.

Of course there is, why do you think NASA gets less than 1% of the Federal Budget? Of course, in 2011 that amounted to about 35% of the total academic scientific research spending, but with NASA then riding at 0.53% of the federal budget, academic scientific research amounted to just slightly over 1.5% of the budget.

At the outset, yes, private spaceflight was impossible.

The sheer amount of resources that had to be invested by states before it became a commercial venture proves this. Modern private space companies are free-riders, piggybacking off decades of work and trillions of dollars (inflation adjusted) invested by governments in building the systems, technology and infrastructure necessary to make space flight a reasonable proposition.

And after a decade of development in private spaceflight, it still is overwhelmingly oriented around giving millionaire tourists a few orbits, and a state-subsidized picking up of the slack for commercial satellite launching.

 

[Polish Eagle]

I'm surprised that Lockeed Martin and Boeing are BOTH not lobbying Congress to shut down the COTS program and bankrupt SpaceX. After all, the Falcon 9 is going to take away business from the EELVs once they are proven to work.

To a degree, they are preparing, at least by my understanding of a few articles on the topic at The Space Review. It seems that United Launch Alliance arranged for the USAF to purchase several years worth of Atlas V launches recently, despite that launcher's growing costs. It's not like SpaceX is going to kill that launcher immediately anyway--for multi-billion-dollar DoD payloads, the experience that ULA brings to the field is valued more than the cost savings. For now, at least--whenever SpaceX gets around to launching a few satellites, that picture will change for better or worse. As for COTS and CCDev, both Boeing and LockMart stand to profit from it to a degree--Boeing through CST-100, LockMart through the fact that Boeing, Sierra Nevada, and Blue Origin intend to use the Atlas V.

 

[SAVORYapple]

As for COTS and CCDev, both Boeing and LockMart stand to profit from it to a degree--Boeing through CST-100, LockMart through the fact that Boeing, Sierra Nevada, and Blue Origin intend to use the Atlas V.

yes, but Boeing and LockMart can afford to lose COTS contracts. SpaceX.....less so. For ULA, getting rid of a cocky upstart competitor may be FAR better than losing several hundred million dollars.

 

[e of pi]

yes, but Boeing and LockMart can afford to lose COTS contracts. SpaceX.....less so. For ULA, getting rid of a cocky upstart competitor may be FAR better than losing several hundred million dollars.

SpaceX has a $3 billion flight manifest, which is about double what they spent over the last decade. If necessary, they could reduce schedule pressure on Dragon and other elements of their dev program, cutting back from working on three things at once to maybe one, and focus on flying their manifest minus COTS, and they'd still be pretty well off. They might need an IPO or some additional angel money to ensure cash-on-hand while they refocus on operations, but I think they could do it.