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The Business Case for Reusable Launch Vehicles
An anonymous reader writes "Remember the failures of "shuttle replacements" like VentureStar? A Space Review article argues that even if VentureStar succeeded technically, it and other proposed big RLVs would never have made it financially: they cost too much to develop and wouldn't have made it up through increased launches. What's the solution? The author says that suborbital RLVs, like what Carmack, Rutan, and the other X Prize contenders are working on, will create a business cycle that will eventually lead to orbital vehicles."
It's imagination. The aviation industry used to have a handful of folks who could imagine and conceptualize the darndest vehicles - and a slew of brilliant engineers to turn those concepts into reality (or dis-prove the concept based on technical limitations, materiaks, etc.)
Nowadays, money issues and the eternal pursuit of higher profit margins has forced many of the dreamers out of the big aerospace companies and into places where there simply isn't the technical base to turn their ideas into anything at all. That's where the X-Prize will hopefully bear fruit - IF (when) the prize is claimed.
How long did it take for Trans-Atlantic airlines to start showing profits after Lindy made his flight? It's a rhetorical question, but the answer might be interesting, nonetheless.
This sig is a test. If this had been an actual sig, you would be reading something quite a bit wittier than this now.
Sorry to disagree but your argument is historically invalid. Every new frontier has had entry costs: cost in money, cost in materials, cost in lives. If Columbus had thought the way you do the New World would never have been discovered, and you probably wouldn't be here.
Eventually, every frontier has been commercialized and used for profit, whether it be new continents, the sea, space, the microcosm, you name it. Space already has been successfully exploited for communications, research, military and entertainment purposes, and if we continue to expand our presence there it will become even more valuable. I got news for you: space became commercially viable some time ago.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.