One thought on “Space Policy”

1. Geometric mean nominal GDP growth 1999-2019 was about 4%. For the space sector to get from $400B/year to $1T/year in 2039 is 4.68%. That is, to hit the goal, it only requires 0.7% faster growth than the rest of the economy. That’s not exactly acceleration toward escape velocity. Amazon stock, in contrast, had 24% growth over 22 years since IPO. Hopefully the next round of cost cuts will spark enough investment and consumer interest for a mass market. E.g., Falcon Heavy is $750/lb of payload fully loaded to low Earth orbit. Musk tweeted Starship/Superheavy payload will be ten times less than the Falcon 9: $1236/lb fully loaded -> $123.6/lb. A380F was planned to carry 330,000 lbs., but the passenger version in the original 3-class configuration only carries 555 people. That implies 594 lbs of luggage, equipment, body weight, crew, etc. per passenger. If Starship is the same, cost will be about $123.6*594 or about $73,500 to orbit–retail price will be higher, tens of millions at first. The Greason/Bennett Reason paper suggests if it’s the same ratio of energy required orbit vs. Australia, it might cost as low as $42,720. I think that’s unreasonably low at least until we can skip loading oxidizer which the Australia flight doesn’t need but they don’t give their assumptions. If $73,500 to orbit doesn’t spark 24% growth, I’ll be disappointed.

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