~Jon

That isn’t to say that people who think they’ve got a good idea for higher performance propulsion shouldn’t follow through with them, but just pointing out that it’s one of many routes to opening up the moon for economic development. I do agree that Kevin’s work is interesting, if for no other reason than that it’s one of the only non-nuclear high-thrust, higher-Isp ideas out there. But they’ve still got a long way to go on that, including a whole lot of infrastructure that would need to be built.

~Jon

Jon hit it on the head. Elon had already spent a hundred million dollars on Falcon cum Dragon before COTS was even a gleam in NASA’s eye. Remember he had already committed himself to reaching the Bigelow space station. And that aforementioned hundred million dollars is just a fraction of his personal fortune. Furthermore, he has said from the beginning that he will spend as much of his money as it takes – or in his own words to “turn a large fortune into a small fortune”. Obviously, all COTS is going to do for Musk is to allow him to recoup the money he has spent faster and to use the NASA award to accomplish his very long range goal of getting to Mars in a shorter time frame. But COTS or no COTS, SpaceX was already in an “Orbit or bust!” mode and has always had immense money reserves on hand to recover even from fairly catastrophic setbacks along the way.

I have no idea what it would be (though Parkin’s microwave launcher looks promising) but the existence of a commercially available high thrust engine with an Isp in the 800+ range would drastically reduce the infrastructure required and move lunar resources into the economic range much sooner.

As was stated at the Cynics, it would appear that the numbers for a fuel depot do not work out unless something like Elon’s Falcon 9 actually flies.

Well, I’ve got at least one idea (other than the ones I mentioned on the other thread) that if right would disprove that. But that’s for another post (I know, I know, I still haven’t gotten to it yet).

Using EELV for a fuel depot is just too expensive. MORE expensive that ESAS.

Nope. Not if you count the full cost of launching something via ESAS. Ares-I is over twice as expensive per pound all things considered than EELVs, and Ares-V isn’t cost competitive either. Remember to be fair you have to count at least fixed costs for the Ares launchers, and you have to consider bulk-buy effects for EELVs. When you do that, that comment falls flat.

And why Ares? To preserve the Thiokol SRBs for Mars. If Musk fails and the heavy lift industrial infrastructure is gutted, Mars is off the table. With Ares V or DIRECT, MarsDirect remains a possibility.

Not true either. You can do Mars Direct better without SRBs than you can do with them. Remember–for a Mars mission over 80-90% of the mass on orbit needed is propellants. If you have orbital propellant depots, you don’t need HLVs.

Nasaspaceflight has had a marvelous set of threads on how the 4 segment SRBs and SSMEs hit a real sweet spot for launching a rocket. If Musk fails, NASA can still accomplish its mission.

NASA could still accomplish its mission better than ESAS with on-orbit propellant depots, even if Musk fails.

It also appears that the Ross Tierney DIRECT project may be getting some traction. DIRECT really does solve a whole lot of problems (engineering and political) and gets us to the moon even if SpaceX fails to perform.

More to the point, it also frees up enough money that NASA could afford to spend some money on actually retiring some of the risks for orbital propellant depots and other high-payoff technologies. If you have to insist on using a Shuttle Derived vehicle, DIRECT is by far the least sucky.

~Jon

You have to remember that personal orbital spaceflight had just barely started to be taken seriously in the past few years. COTS is a good deal, but imagining that without COTS nothing would be happening is naive at best.

And assuming that commercial manned lunar missions won’t start until NASA funds a Lunar COTS program sometime 20-30 years from now is equally naive.

~Jon

I think we’re on the same page there.

~Jon

In past discussion threads here we’ve discussed lists of pre-economic possibilities. Some people (especially Bill White, I believe) have indicated that they think it’s possible to run a profitable business by exploiting numerous pre-economic markets at once (eg, tourism coupled with advertising and perhaps sample return, astronaut training, etc IIRC). Synergy between multiple markets might indeed sustain a business, but my take is that a single profitable niche is much more likely to spur a new business than a web of markets that happens to be collectively profitable.

Try this thought experiment:

Visualize whatever “killer app” you believe will become economic first. Then visualize scenario A where a company follows that plan and makes money but also contracts with Nike to plaster some logos on the spacesuits. In scenario B there are no logos.

Both Company A and Company B may close their business cases but with Nike, Company A makes more money.

Truth be told, I agree with Jon Goff — ubiquitous marketing is tacky and offensive. But it makes money.