Burt Rutan said in Mojave Desrt News (via Leonard David)

“I expect we will see at least two space flights a day in the next few years,” Rutan said, noting that the spacecraft and the launch vehicles he is designing “will be able to make two flights per day,” the newspaper story stated.

730 flights a year carrying 5-7 passengers each has capacity for over 5000 paid seats flown per year. Futron's new white paper updating the assumptions used to do its 2002 suborbital tourism study predicts demand for 600 paid seats flown in 2008 using its model. So "in the next few years" means 2017 according to Futron and that is for the entire suborbital industry combined.

The white paper still excludes games and promotions demand, but only a few firms have emerged with offerings so far (including mine, Space-Shot.com). Even if that doubles the quantity predictions from Futron, the industry won't hit 5000 flights a year until 2014. The Futron study does predict a steady S-Curve adoption and capacity addition. If there are four or more players with overcapacity such that two of them can serve the market, expect the price to drop to just below the marginal cost per flight of the 4th or 3rd cheapest to operate. That would not include development cost or overhead, just fuel, maintenance, pilot and training. That would allow the market price to hit $100k or less as soon as overcapacity arrived and drive ticket prices down to the 2017 levels that would support 5,000 seats a year. $500 million is still pretty good revenue. 10,000 seats a year if there are two such firms (with the third and fourth going bankrupt, yet operating anyway at marginal cost to keep the price down on the first two) isn't seen until 2020 by Futron at a price point of about $65,000. But that price point is not implausible in an overcapacity situation. Again, $650 million is a pretty good chunk of change so don't weep for them.

If you recall that firms were selling seats retail for $100k, you might expect that the wholesale price for some of the firms doing suborbital are south of that, and that was all-in including development costs.

I'm not sure if I agree with your conclusion. I think that if the supply is there for a cheap enough price, demand will follow. Especially since I'm sure that Spaceship Two won't be flying two flights a day every day right away, so it will have some time to build up people's confidence.

Ian: I agree with your conclusion. The question is, "Is the 'cheap enough price' $200k, $150k, $100k or $65k?" Or alternatively, is 'some time' 3 years, 7 years, 10 years or 14 years from now?

True. I honestly don't know how we can speculate on space tourism since it is such a completely new field. I suppose it's interesting to try though.

Futron's new white paper updating the assumptions used to do its 2002 suborbital tourism study predicts demand for 600 paid seats flown in 2008 using its model.

I'm highly sceptical of any these so called experts and their models. It's hard to fit a curve when you have zero data points.

Christ: I'm skeptical too, but what other predictions are out there?

So anybody have any reasonable gueses about a supply/demand curve?

Assuming it was safe, and it cost the same as a few days at Disneyland, I'd take my family up for a few days in a space station in a heartbeat. If it cost $200 a head for a suborbital flight (and it was safe), again, I'd take my family up in a heartbeat. $1000 dollar a head, I'd probably do it but not for sure, and not necessarily immediately.

I suspect that's true of many many people, so that's probably the low end of the demand curve.

What's the supply curve going to look like?

I can tell you the supply curve to orbit and suborbit is 0 flights at anything less than 7 figures right now, though you might be able to convert a sounding rocket for the right price to get to 100km.

f it cost $200 a head for a suborbital flight (and it was safe), again, I'd take my family up in a heartbeat. $1000 dollar a head, I'd probably do it but not for sure, and not necessarily immediately.

Suborbital spaceflight is very unlikely to drop below $10,000 before the end of the next decade. There simply isn't enough volume in the market, and the current generation of rocket motors require large amounts of maintenance between flights.