Launch prices basically are energy costs, plus a markup, so they are never going to make this work unless you could make the whole thing extremely light...
That would be a lot of extra launch weight just to return the first stage, not to mention the danger of having filled boosters on the rocket the whole launch.
100kg seems like a barely usable amount of lift. It means you need an in-orbit assembly system for most things you want to launch and I'm pretty sure you're not going to be able to launch a person with life support gear.
This is cool, but to put it in perspective, the Falcon Heavy (set to launch...tomorrow?) cost $90,000,000 with a 8,000 kg payload...this is about $5,000 / pound.
The Japanese one was $3,500,000 for 3 kg, or over $500,000 / pound.
My math kinda right? I'm ignoring that Elon's rocket is theoretically reusable 10+ times, so his number could be much lower.
Oh, man. If you think you can get it done in a single billionaire's budget, all power to you. But developing a Falcon Heavy looks like a much smaller marginal project than a launch rail.
Forgive the laymans question but how much would it cost to ferry one extra rocket whose mission is to help it land by giving a larger margin of error when landing on the drone ship. I'm guessing carrying a few extra tonnes of deadweight engine for 99% of the mission is a big deal.
Cost to get things into orbit is expensive - I don't have the numbers but the amount of extra fuel for every pound is, though roughly 90% of the weight of any launch vehicle is fuel. So if you can have something lighter do the same job, then costs etc really start to factor in hard.
They're only a few hundred pounds each. Falcon 9 can launch 50,000 lbs to LEO in expandable mode, so probably about 30,000 lbs when reusable, meaning they could launch close to 100 if they weighed 300lbs (there'd also be a deployment structure etc).
44 seems very doable, and they'd just burn up like any other satellite.
The article states the on-launch weight of it was 1,360kg, but what would have been interesting to know is the expected weight of debris that would reach the surface.
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