Theoretically, but to make that work you're talking about a far greater advance in space capabilities than "just" launching from earth. You're still talking about launching 10 millions tons of material, and you're going to need local infrastructure to do everything like "make launch vehicles and fuel" if you want it to be an efficiency win over launching from earth.
I think it partially depends on how you go about it.
If you’re moving heavy industry to Earth orbit and supporting it entirely with material shipments from earth, yeah that seems like a no-go.
On the other hand, if it’s the moon, asteroid belt, or even Mars we’re talking about, you really just need enough launches to bootstrap the operation. The bulk of other materials can procured locally, reducing the number of launches to just those getting personnel to the stations, which would be dramatically fewer in number and less than a rounding error in terms of emissions (each rocket launch is roughly equal to a commercial flight, the latter of which there are tens of thousands each year).
It'd be inefficient anyway to use Earth resources except for some early bootstrapping. Extraterrestrial resources (asteroids, the moon, solar power, local resources on Mars) are more accessible. And it's underappreciated that for what you do need from Earth, launch can get much cheaper/cleaner after enough development in space, just as an elevator system gets more efficient with a counterweight.
Currently all the stuff we want to launch is on the ground, though. Until we have a space elevator, or we're aiming to launch something huge to the outer planets, it doesn't gain us much.
It is achievable with existing technology and materials. We would need something like an industrial lunar base to get material cheap into orbit, though.
I don't see how this is viable as an earth launch system. You have all this complexity and payload restrictions, just to go from a two stage launch system to... a two stage launch system.
However, I think this technology will be extremely valuable for launching material from the moon.
So kudos for investing for this. And I think it will even end up being a profitable investment. Just not for the intended purpose.
On the other hand, I think it should not be feasible. How many kilograms of raw materials would be required? And at what altitude? I don't think there's enough propellant on earth to lift that much stuff.
Interestingly there are proposed launch systems that, while not being $10, would potentially be under $1000 and transform passenger and freight movement on Earth too. I am of course talking about orbital rings [1].
No, unfortunately there are so many reasons this wouldn't work. Just a few
- $3 million per 150 tons is still massively expensive.
- Mass rocket launches are horrendous for the climate because of the resources and energy they require (not to speak of the huge mass of hydrogen/methane for every ton).
- Servers certainly can't be manufactured in space.
- Housing humans to maintain them is too expensive.
- Power in space is expensive.
- Radiating heat away in space is very expensive, and a luxury we take for granted on Earth.
- Shipping parts to space is slow and expensive.
- Modern computers don't like all the radiation in space.
I could go on and on, but basically, doing anything in space is hilariously expensive, and theres no reason to do it unless you absolutely have to be in space for it, like space telescopes, probes, comms or zero gravity experiments. Go play Kerbal Space Program for a bit, and it will expunge whatever dreams of mass space industry you have from your brain :P
There's something there in your point. But I think the kind of launch and landing infrastructure requires these kinds of things be pretty far from important population centers...meaning your short rocketship trip would be bookended by interminable ground transport.
I don’t see them building their launch ports closer to cities than airports now are, nor do I see them (certainly initially) build launch ports next to each major city. So, for most civilian flights, those earth-to-earth trips would not be that much faster, if at all.
Also, those flights would have to be extremely safe to get in the same ballpark as current commercial flights. I think that is needed to make this a ‘normal’ thing.
I would guess those earth-to-earth trips could make more sense for the military than for civilians. Yes, there is the problem of refueling your rocket near a war zone, and a risk of your rocket getting shot down, but the ability to very rapidly deploy specialized troops and/or materials may eventually be worth that, and the military might fund it even if they aren’t convinced the advantages will pan out.
This is super cool technology that will probably work given enough time, but I struggle to see the world in which it would be more economical than other terrestrial launch options. The tech could really shine in bulk material shipments outside of the atmosphere. Given the vacuum requirement it is already mostly designed to support that. The unfortunate part is that number of existing ventures it could be applied off-world is precisely zero at the moment.
Why outside of atmosphere? Launching from Earth poses some pretty hardcore requirements:
* Total system needs to achieve at least 7.2km/s.
* 7.2km/s initial velocity is not practical because of extreme atmospheric friction, heating, and vibration. You would need 9+km/s to escape atmosphere anyhow because of drag.
* You need a second stage which is heavy compared to payloads you want to launch, making the device capable to spinning a heavy second stage is challenging.
* Ideally you want your second stage to be as light as possible, which means less delta-V, which requires high `first-stage` spin speeds, which requires the launch device to be operated in the vacuum and second stage capable of withstanding lots of G forces.
Looking at off world applications, such as bulk launching materials from Moon, Mars, or asteroid belt, all of the above hard requirements are not there anymore. Escape velocity much lower, second stage is replaced with comparatively tiny terminal guidance stage or is significantly less massive, you have vacuum so no seals or atmospheric drag heating...
To summarize, I believe terrestrial economics will be quite iffy, but off world bulk material launches could workout (if the company survives till the point when the capability is needed).
I was just explaining how possible it is. I am skeptical that anything like it will ever actually be built on Earth.
Other non-rocket launch technologies do seem more promising. If you could build a mass driver launcher between Galapagos and Ecuador, you could likely build a launch loop in the same spot for less capital, less operating cost, and higher capacity.
Forget about launching people or anything squishy or delicate. You'd still get a lot of use out of things that could survive 1000g. That would let you launch things into orbit with an accelerator only 4 miles long. Launching refueling stations or LEO->GEO tugs would be useful. How about rolled-up thin-film solar panels?
I guess that could work, I did not think of that. Not sure if it greatly improves viability but venting into the solar winds I guess could be an option. At low earth orbit wouldn’t most material fall back down to Earth, it’s not like they’d be vending hydrogen. And a very high Earth orbit would incur even greater costs of getting material into space. It still seems bananas.
Edit: I checked and solar wind starts at 60K km so there is no solar wind at LEO and 60K km is way beyond geostationary where it is already considered too expensive to bring things back to Earth.
Sure, but with a system like this you still need to build for reusability of a rocket - if not then even a smaller rocket will be more expensive than what SpaceX is planning to do with Starship.
And if you're building a fully reusable rocket system, then neither size nor fuel matter as much as the simplicity and reliability of launch and landing. And here traditional rocket systems will win on Earth.
On Mars or Moon, with less gravity and atmosphere these systems will be more feasible though since they can possibly launch into orbit without rocket boosters.
The idea is probably using ISRU(in-situ resource utilization) with regards to local asteroids to save on launch costs. Manufacturing/assembly would likely be more expensive at first until the techniques and technologies are learned(perhaps one could upsell this as "truly green manufacturing" since there would be no environmental byproducts to affect Earth).
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