D
DarkenedOne
Guest
People have been trying to figure out how to make space more affordable since the space age began. Most of their focus has been on launch vehicles. The truth is that I do not have much hope for the cost for launches coming down to much in the near future.
The fact is that we live in a gravity well. It requires huge amounts of thrust and energy in order to reach orbit. This results in high mass fraction, which makes it very difficult to make single stage reusable vehicles. It is very difficult to have re-usability when your craft has to be 95% fuel by mass.
These fact have led me to conclude that the best strategy is simply to minimize the back and forth from Earth and focus on in-space infrastructure.
The truth is that there really are no physical limits from I understand to how long space infrastructure could last with regular maintenance. Take the ISS for example. It cost about $100 billion dollars to build. Half of this can be attributed to the shuttle so lets go with $50 billion. Well say it lasts 40 years. We are currently able to keep it fully operational at 2 billion dollars a year. As with other construction projects high capital costs are justifiable if the asset has a sufficiently long lifetime.
By having a great deal of long lasting infrastructure in space we can then charge commercial launcher companies for resupply and crew transport.
The fact is that we live in a gravity well. It requires huge amounts of thrust and energy in order to reach orbit. This results in high mass fraction, which makes it very difficult to make single stage reusable vehicles. It is very difficult to have re-usability when your craft has to be 95% fuel by mass.
These fact have led me to conclude that the best strategy is simply to minimize the back and forth from Earth and focus on in-space infrastructure.
The truth is that there really are no physical limits from I understand to how long space infrastructure could last with regular maintenance. Take the ISS for example. It cost about $100 billion dollars to build. Half of this can be attributed to the shuttle so lets go with $50 billion. Well say it lasts 40 years. We are currently able to keep it fully operational at 2 billion dollars a year. As with other construction projects high capital costs are justifiable if the asset has a sufficiently long lifetime.
By having a great deal of long lasting infrastructure in space we can then charge commercial launcher companies for resupply and crew transport.