Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to But at least it's now within sight.

Absolutely
Nathan Koren — (archived)

At ~$18M per seat, there's a very small -- yet very real -- demand for private orbital spaceflight. If political barriers were lowered and there were an unlimited supply of Soyuzes, there might be a world market of 3-4 private space travellers per year. Not impressive.

However, given the way that wealth is distributed, we can anticipate that as prices fall linearly, demand will increase exponentially. The question is, what is the exponent? That's what the first generation of private orbital spacecraft will reveal.

Let's say that they get the price down to $3M per seat, and are able to book 75-100 travellers per year at that price. This would indicate that demand is increasing inversely to the square of the cost, which means that one could reasonably predict 2,700 - 3,600 travellers annually at $500,000 apiece, and 68,000 - 90,000 at $100,000 apiece. Just knowing this information will greatly accelerate the timetable of space development. Having an *actual* price-demand curve can really motivate your investors (as opposed to bullsh*t speculation like mine).

Hopefully, we'll get that curve before the decade is out. I predict that the revolution will arrive about 5 years later.

Cheers,

Nathan.

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (35 posts)