From: vince@offshore.ai (Vincent Cate) Newsgroups: sci.space.history,sci.space.policy Subject: Re: $5M Moon Rock Stolen From Malta Museum References: <373a0bc9.0405211458.bde154a@posting.google.com> <9186edb5.0405250856.eeee6b9@posting.google.com> <9186edb5.0405260624.b0faebd@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.42.133.252 Message-ID: <9186edb5.0405262135.66768255@posting.google.com> henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer) wrote in message news:... > In article <9186edb5.0405260624.b0faebd@posting.google.com>, > Vincent Cate wrote: > >On the other hand there is not so much room for improvement in rockets. > > Actually a debatable point, but one wouldn't undertake rocket R&D in a > context like this. (The whole point of the rocket approach would be to > reduce risk and shorten the time before revenue starts flowing, by using > at least an *approach*, if not actual hardware, that is reasonably proven.) I meant that the rocket approach can not give you the mass returned that tethers can. I did not mean to do rocket R&D. > The tether would be very interesting as a *second generation* system, > after a minimum-innovation rocket system paves the way politically and > proves that there is a lucrative market there. In fact, for the initial > system, you might want to forget the new design and pay the Russians to > revive the Luna sample-return system, despite the need for a Proton launch > and the very small return payload. The Russians have already flown it, so maybe it is time for the second generation system. :-) This thread started because someone noted that a tiny little moon rock was valued at $5 mil. I think it is safe to say that there is a market of more than $200 mil. > Also, there's rad-hard and there's rad-hard. Electronic gear that can > take modest amounts of radiation is not hard to find. But a slow passage > through the inner Van Allen belt is a whole new order of magnitude. That > gets you into territory populated -- rather thinly -- by cost-is-no-object > hardware designed for fighting nuclear wars. Ok. I guess we should avoid this problem at least to start with. > >The difference in initial launch mass between an all-chemical-rocket mission > >and a tether/ion/regolith-thruster mission, for a given payload returned, > >seems to be something like a factor of 100 to 1000. As long as launch > >costs are high, this seems like an overwhelming advantage. > > Only when operations costs become the dominant problem. The problems of > first-generation systems, at least, will be dominated by development costs > and risk mitigation. But if we count the first few flights as part of the development cost, since they are really test flights, then a tether guy who uses a $6 mil Falcon-I launch has part of his development that just costs less than a a guy using a $30 mil launcher etc. - Vince