John Hare has some interesting speculations on how a Masten/XCOR team might reduce costs to orbit.
3 thoughts on “Cooperation”
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John Hare has some interesting speculations on how a Masten/XCOR team might reduce costs to orbit.
Comments are closed.
Um, from what I know of them, any plan that starts with $250M in development costs is a) not XCOR’s plan, and b) unlikely to work.
XCOR will slowly build the capability they desire, spending only what they can easily afford in time and money. If you gave them $250M, I’d bet they would take a long time to spend it – not in a hail Marry pass project like we’ve seen so often.
David,
The concept does not start with $250M in development costs. The plan starts with XCOR and Masten both having an operational suborbital capacity in five years. Only after they are both proven operators does the $250M come into play.
I agree with what you say, but that was not the intent of the post. Five years ago the smart money would seem to have been on Scaled Composites, and five years from now it could be on somebody else we aren’t even considering now. I picked that pair for that post because they really seem to have it together right now, and I have friends there.
How soon are we going to have barnstorming rockets at county fairs? I’m not going to be able to afford sub-orbital anytime soon, but I’d go up a thousands meters in a rocket for a hundred bucks. That would be so cool.
Yours,
Tom