Interesting business analysis of why it is less expensive than ever to build your own spacecraft.

Now the hardware and funding is coming together to enable the development of the initial suborbital vehicle, to be known as Xerus...

Rich Pournelle, XCOR’s director of business development said small aerospace companies are seeing some encouraging trends for the better. For one, the computer power needed to carry out rocket and engine fabrication, including computational fluid design, is now affordable for small firms. ***

“The point is … you can do significant technical work with a small team,” Pournelle said in an April 12 interview with Space News. “The amount of work that five to 10 people in a garage can do nowadays is incredible.”

Another favorable trend has emerged within the area of supply chain management. Small space companies can have a lean inventory process and don’t need to have a warehouse full of parts. Finding a specialty supplier of a needed rocket part — say a cryogenic valve, for example — is just a Google search away and a next-day mail delivery, Pournelle said.

Another trend working in favor of small companies stems from the savaging of the U.S. industrial base and the relocation of manufacturing overseas, Pournelle added. Machines, tooling and other hardware that at one time cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, he said, now can be obtained for pennies on the dollar.

*** The computing point is one I made here in the 90s. I said that eventually, CAD, knowlege basis, simulation, auto-fab machinery etc. would be so inexpensive that dozens of employees making serious money would be replaced by computer surrogates making private financing of spaceships viable. with computers there's the ever present danger of really big 'common sense' mistakes balanced by the opportunity to design and fabricate innovative spacecraft at unheralded low development and manufacturing costs, q.v. Armadillo.

My prediction of a private Mars mission in the mid-late 2030s still stands. I'll add this, the private mission to Mars will be the first, beating all governments. I hold zero hope for NASA in manned spaceflight.