Let's assume we're going to lauch 100's of times a year. We launch standardized packages from the equator for orbit assembly. Maybe it's a space hotel, maybe mars colonization materials. What would be the least expensive projections for cost to orbit. Let's say we start in low orbit. What would be additional cost/mass to move some of it to high orbit or escape?
I'm assuming with economy of scale we could have really cheap guidance solutions and cargo carrying solutions (as far as design). What cost could we approach asymptotically with current technology?
I'm really just trying to understand if economy of scale would lower cost to orbit much. I guess that is also indirectly asking the question what is overhead of current launches and could it be reduced much with standardization and economy of scale.
Maybe I'm asking the wrong question too. Let's assume you have a payload that is 100's of times the current capacity of todays maximum heavy lift vehicle. How would you get that payload to orbit? Would you design a hyper-heavy lift vehicle for this job because that would be more efficient?
If you had economy of scale, what would be cheapest conventional rocket to get a lot of a mass to orbit?
The whole thread (21 posts)
- If you had economy of scale, what would be cheapest conventional rocket to get a lot of a mass to orbit?
- Your framework of assumptions is completely unrealistic
- Musk's "Falcon" launchers are turbopump fed.
- I am an engineer just trying to understand design space tradeoffs
- Why the snark? If you don't want to play then don't play. (n/t)
- re: If you had economy of scale, what would be cheapest conventional rocket to get a lot of a mass to orbit?
- SeaDragon is one end of the curve
- Your framework of assumptions is completely unrealistic
