From: Doug Jones (djones@xcor.com)
Date: Wed Feb 20 2002 - 17:41:12 MST
neptune@mars.superlink.net wrote:
>
> Doug Jones writes:
> > $10 million would go a long way toward cheap access to space- which is
> > the Step 1 toward all the other scenarios. Apply below... and we plan
> > to be profitable in under five years, not in a freaking decade.
>
> What's the minimum you would need to achieve profitability in five years?
I'm not in the finance loop and shouldn't give out guesstimates off the
top of my head; consider my earlier comments a teaser for serious
investors to contact us to talk. If you or someone you know has around
$10 million and wants to make it grow in an exciting way, call us.
> I know I've also broached this subject before, but why come up with new
> designs for rockets? Why not use old ones -- Saturn, e.g. -- and just build
> inelegant, ugly workhouses that you can throwaway? Wouldn't that be
> cheaper?
In a word, no. Old engines are either NOT cheap, nonexistent, or too
unreliable for routine reuse. Expendable launch vehicles just perpetuate
the "launcher as ammunition" meme, and cannot bring space access prices
down into the realm of the reasonable, period full stop. Throwing away
an airliner after every flight would make air travel preposterously
expensive too. Big Dumb Boosters have been proposed, and as recently as
the Beal BA-2, attempted. Just to get it barely working the design
rapidly grows more complex until the inelegant, ugly workhorse is too
expensive to throw away. Trashing a lot of hardware for every flight
cannot be cheap, no matter how many you fly.
-- Doug Jones, Rocket Plumber
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