Time to go back to the salt mine. I don't really mind working, you know. But there's not going to be much time for this.
Anyway, the audience numbers were good as long as I post. Once it slows down, the numbers will drop. Oh well. I can't be in two places at the same time. Technology hasn't advanced that far yet. Maybe quantum mechanics will allow for it someday.
I noticed a great deal of interest in one of my posts dating back to September. It was about the X37-C. It is like a mini-shuttle that can be transported to space and back again. It is currently being used for some military project that remains secret. There's an idea to make it big enough to carry passengers to and from space.
My idea was to put it inside of a Skylon type airframe that would be attached to the Stratolauncher vehicle being developed. It would have to be scaled down a bit so that it would fit under there. The Skylon type craft would then be dropped and would proceed to power up and fly the type of trajectory planned for the Skylon. Once in space, it would release the X37-C and then return to base. All parts of the system would be reusable with a fast turnaround.
With such a system, you can could small amounts of cargo or passengers. With a lot of flights taking place over a course of time, a large supply could be accumulated for deep space missions--let's say to Mars for example. Or mining a 20 trillion dollar rock. Another activity? Build a moonbase that would enable even deeper space missions, like colonizing space and so forth.
With the Skylon projected to fly up to 200 times, that would mean it would carry 4 million pounds of cargo over its lifetime, assuming 20k pounds capacity. That's a 1/3 reduction in the planned capacity of the Skylon as now configured. At 500 bucks a pound, it could generate $2,000,000,000 in revenues. Development costs for the Skylon are said to be 12 billion British pounds or something like that. A fleet of these things may make a cost target like that work. Let's say 20 of these things could generate $40 billion in revenues over their projected lifetimes.
Perhaps that's really not enough, so prices may need to be higher than that. That's looks to be the down side of downsizing the thing. Not enough revenues.
The important thing is to get people in space. Perhaps a better way to get fuel up there could be found. Looks like a million and a half dollars per passenger, if seven are carried each time. Maybe the market for this isn't big enough to support those type of prices. Who knows?
If seven are carried on each flight, and each bird flies 200 times, that's 1400 people over the lifetime of the bird. Multiplied over a fleet of 20 birds, thats 28k people who would want to spend 1 million and a half bucks to visit space. Is there a market that would support this? I'm not sure.
Perhaps an economic system could be found that could support the venture. Tourism, exploration, manufacturing, and mining might be put into the mix of possible activities to support the traffic.
But that is speculative at this point. Don't know if the flying concept would even work.
There's not much time to write much more on the ideas as my time is now limited.
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