The news is coming fast from from SpaceX and Musk.

• Keith Cowing told us about Dragon on March 6.
• Alan Boyle asked one of the questions I wanted to ask him, “Do you talk to Jeff Bezos?” Yes occasionally. “Musk … will probably seek outside funding once the company has a few successful launches under its belt.”
• Jon Goff’s supposition that Dragon development has not require more than $100 million founder funding was confirmed with Musk by Boyle

Makes my interview (part 1 and 2) of Dianne Molina, Marketing Manager at SpaceX just the tip of the iceberg.

Virgin Galactic mailed me a survey which you can access. Answer truthfully. I (owner of SpaceShot) am not like the competitors that Julian Simon talks about in his mailorder books that tries to muck up competitors’ surveys. They inquire about pricing for Virgin Galactic Quest in $10 increments from 0-60+. Drop me a line at transterrestrial@dinkin.com or comment what you think tournament entries for a trip to space should cost. Also tell me what kind of profit margin you think would be fair. And whether a bundle of more than one entry would be OK. Note that credit card fixed charges are $0.30 + 2-3% at paypal which has a restrictive skill games policy and $0.40 or more elsewhere so credit cards will eat up 6-7% of a $10 charge, but only 4-5% of a $20 charge. Can someone give me a quote for the cost of building and analyzing one of those surveys? (I don’t want to buy one, just validate my decision not to.)

If numbers get repeated often enough, like in this gallery of commercial space opportunities, they start to be believed. Business 2.0 as part of a big spread on space investment opportunities in their March cover story retells some whoppers.

Space Hotels: $5B/year by 2015

This is inconsistent with Futron and world launch capabilities and expense. First let’s see if someone wins the America’s Space Prize. Expensive travel means very little revenue. By 2025, very possible if space access costs drop. $2M/month would get a lot of takers if we can get 600kg worth of people, spaceship and consumables to orbit at $3000/kg including payload. A Progress at 2000-3000kg of payload lasts 2-3 months with three eaters.

Mars: $400B in exploration by 2030

If you just put NASA spending in line with US GDP growth and put 12 years of it to “Mars” you get about $400B.

Orbital labs: $10B/year by 2015

NASA can’t even come up with a business case to finish ISS. So far the only demand has come from Greg Olsen so he could take a tax writeoff on his vacation. Hmm, maybe it will be a conference destination.

Solar sats: $100B/year by 2020.

You have to beat the marginal cost of hydrocarbons to make money on this. Julian Simon’s Ultimate Resouce 2 indicates heavily against this. Methane hydrates, coal and uranium would have to be taxed to a standstill (which is not impossible) for this to be this big. Space elevators flip it.

Space elevator: $2B/year by 2021

If it works much bigger. It will probably be bigger than solar sats or asteroid mining. Without competition, almost all profits from solar sats and asteroid mining will accrue to the elevator owner.

Asteroid mining: $10B/year by 2030

The space access and demand curve math does not really work except for local consumption in space. But it would be a great place to colonize along with the Moon and Mars.

Moon: $104B in exploration by 2018, $250B in helium mining by 2050

The exploration comes from extrapolating the NASA budget: good bet; the He3 requires us to run out of uranium or patience for it. Not likely.

Microsats: $1.5B/year by 2018

Likely an underestimate as miniaturization, space access costs and dedicated launchers for microsats come into their own

Space Tourism: $1B/year by 2023

This will be bigger than hotels, which is not to say that it will be more than twice Futron’s prediction repeated here. (The factor of 2 selfishly comes from games. The transport to and from the hotel is more expensive than the hotel stay.)

My policy of sponsoring realistic space art to spawn realistic space economics may be bearing some fruit. I sponsored this picture from David Robinson first published in September. In January, Aerospace America had this to say:

“Picture a buggy pulled behind a rover that is outfitted with a set of magnetrons,” [Larry Taylor, distinguished professor of planetary sciences at the University of Tennessee] suggests. (A magnetron is the heating element in a microwave oven.) “With the right power and microwave frequency, an astronaut could drive along, sintering the soil as he goes, making continuous brick…”

I read more of the FAA EA (still 6MB) for OSIDA’s spaceport at BFV in CSIA.* The most interesting things I found were the fuel and noise calculations for concepts X, Y and Z. I don’t really like those designators. Concept X, let’s change to concept R. Concept R has a maximum number of launches proposed of 12 in 2006, 12 in 2007, 24 in 2008, 48 in 2009, and 48 in 2010 (p. 4-2). Concept R runs on LOX and RP-1 (4-47) and needs an estimated 5761 kg of LOX and 2404 kg of RP-1. Concept R takes off and lands with a jet engine (4-39) reaches Mach 1 at 9144m (4-40), drops back to Mach 1 at 99,670m and speeds back up to Mach 1 at the same altitude and slows back down to Mach 1 at 16,459m. All these values are approximate. Let’s suppose concept R starts charging $200,000 per seat in 2008. If they sell three seats at that price per flight, they could expect $14.4 million in revenue at this airport in the first year of commercial operation and $28.8 million in their second and third. I am not sure how the maxes of 12 flights in each of the first two years square with a 25-flight test program with a maiden launch in July 2007. Perhaps they will fly out of other spaceports, have some non-rocket flights, or up the maximum number out of Burns Flat.

I don’t like the letter for concept Y either. Let’s call it X’. Concept X’ is scheduled to fly two times per year 2006-2010 (4-2). X’ does not exceed Mach 1 (4-38). Concept X’ runs on LOX and kerosene or alcohol (4-47). Concept X’ has rocket takeoff and glide landing with 1800 lbs thrust (4-40).

I don’t like the letter for concept Z as you might have guessed. Let’s call it concept V. Concept V has max 2 flights in 2006 and 2007 with 3, 4 and 4 in 2008-2010. Concept V vehicles (sic) will take off with a jet engine (4-39). They will carry Jet-A fuel for the carrier vehicle and 1295kg N₂O and some HTPB for the launch vehicle (4-47) (laughing gas and rubber).

You can see pictures of concept R, X’ and V on pages 2-11, 14 and 17 (although V has an Andrews Space Technology logo in the corner even if there might be a “Virgin” on the side of the carrier–it could be a SpaceDev HL-20 but the two tails and canard on the carrier scale back my expectations of that), and the picture of X’ looks like a Xerus instead of a Velocity and concept R has only one tail instead of two).

In layman’s terms? Expect there to be some kind of attempt at a rocket show in Burns Flat. Rocketplane is getting their spaceport. Hard to say what this means for business as the EA process was started in 2002.

*FAA=Federal Aviation Administration, EA=Environmental Assessment, OSIDA=Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority, BFV=the little known designator of the Burns Flat Vortac which I am guessing at to try to be cute, CSIA=Clinton-Sherman Industrial Airpark

–Update 2006-02-18 09:18

–Update 2006-02-18 09:46

It’s actually a Gryphon Aerospace Plane from Andrews. Probably should be concept G.

NY Times has an article on “the Space Tourism Race” which is interesting mostly for the following quote:

Will Whitehorn, the president of Virgin Galactic, said that 157 people have put down deposits totaling $12.2 million to fly…

A race gets interesting when folks are funded and bending metal. Paper planes come and go. We can also have an industry without a race.