perfidy

Rocket Jones totally breaks character and links to something relating to rockets instead of his usual diet of never-ending reviews of very, very bad movies. This one is an interesting one - on how economy of scale could make even disposable rockets reasonably affordable. Most of the skullsweat invested in lowering the per-pound-cost to orbit focuses on building reusable vehicles, or in some way using advanced technology to duck the inherent limits imposed by the rocket equation. (Or, the think up crazy shit like using atom bombs or Indian rope tricks.) This guy points out that if we just build rockets in job lots of thousands, they'll be cheaper. I find it hard to find any flaw in what he's saying, especially since our entire economy is based in large part on that very concept. The funding proposal he ends his article with is in line with my own thinking - the key point being that the chicken/egg dilemma is the real stumbling block in the development of affordable space travel. I've said before that a guaranteed government contract for ten launch vehicles of a given level of performance would result in advances pretty darn quick. His idea has the advantage of supporting effectively any launch technology - by aiming at launches, rather than vehicles. A cheap enough disposable rocket could meet the requirements as well as a more advanced reusable, and would be an easier technological target - and would, in the meantime, provide the launch market that everyone insists is there, waiting for launch costs to drop sufficiently. That alone, and certainly in addition to government launch contracts, would get the ball moving.

And all for less than the cost of a single shuttle launch...