Cheap ride

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Cheap ride

Gary — 6/23/2005 4:57:58 AM (archived)

Mark said:

>I thought the solar sail craft cost about 4 million dollars. The
>launcher would have to be very cheap to be less than that.

The cheapest reliable ride into LEO with an American rocket would be with a Super Strypi, refer to:

http://smallsat.org/proceedings/12/ssc98/3/ssciii2.pdf

Bottom dollar for a Super Strypi is $5 million per launch. Musk will have to undercut the Super Strypi with his Falcon I. One would assume an expired ex-Soviet SLBM with a high probability of failure would be significantly cheaper than a Super Strypi or a Falcon I (trading actual cost for risk).

Gary

The whole thread (28 posts)

Cosmos 1 - Raoul - 6/21/2005 6:21:47 PM
- re: C'est parti! - Raoul - 6/21/2005 8:50:53 PM
  - Likethose 12 minutes whne we didn't know if Spirit had made it... - ljk - 6/21/2005 9:26:41 PM
    - LOS during rocket burn -- ba-a-a-a-a-ad feelings about this - JimO - 6/21/2005 10:10:37 PM
      - Latest website update... - Adam - 6/21/2005 11:43:01 PM
        
        From the weblog - LJK - 6/22/2005 2:14:30 AM
      - I think they had trouble with separation on the test flight - alcaray - 6/21/2005 10:43:35 PM
        
        re: I think they had trouble with separation on the test flight - LJK - 6/22/2005 1:22:27 AM
        
        Russia is claiming a booster failure at 83 seconds - LJK - 6/22/2005 2:20:07 AM
        
        Does not bode well for Russian SLBM’s (n/t) - Peter Bruener - 6/22/2005 8:39:20 AM
        
        Bummer delux --- Expired ex-Soviet ICBMs can be false economy - Gary - 6/22/2005 4:23:44 AM
        
        Expensive Probe? - Mark Eby - 6/22/2005 11:17:22 PM
        
        Cheap ride - Gary - 6/23/2005 4:57:58 AM
        
        The Zenit wasn't an ICBM derivative - Larry J - 6/22/2005 1:28:30 PM
        
        Actually that might(?) not be true - Gary - 6/23/2005 4:14:03 AM
        
        I don't think so - Larry J - 6/23/2005 1:38:22 PM
        
        depends on payload cost and time constraints - E.P. Grondine - 6/22/2005 1:14:05 PM
        
        I agree completely, these should be insured so you know the real cost (n/t) - Sawyer - 6/22/2005 7:21:29 AM
        
        Maybe Cosmos II will ride atop a Falcon. - Lee - 6/22/2005 5:44:18 AM
        
        Hope you're right... - Adam - 6/22/2005 8:42:50 AM
        
        I'd like to see TPS fund a M2P2 probe. - Lee - 6/22/2005 7:13:30 PM
        
        I'm not quite dead...maybe - LJK - 6/22/2005 11:52:25 AM
        
        Morning weblog update - June 22, 2005 - ljk - 6/22/2005 3:08:46 PM
        
        Time to send a couple more bucks to the Planetary Society - phil - 6/22/2005 3:50:16 PM
        
        Weblog Update - June 22, 2005 11:45 PDT - ljk - 6/22/2005 7:24:35 PM
        
        Weblog Update - June 23, 2005 19:12 PDT - ljk - 6/23/2005 1:44:31 PM
        
        Trying counts - p - 6/23/2005 10:56:30 PM
        
        The Russians say the stages never separated, but those signals... - ljk - 6/24/2005 2:56:08 PM

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