Henry:
Perhaps more significant to profit seeking investors is the fact that wings
are structure that can cost a thousand dollars per pound whilst landing
propellant costs typically dollars per pound; this means that winged
vehicles require flight rates of the order of two orders of magnitude
beyond a vertical lander before the combined production and operational
cost are equal. Thus vertical landing tends to be lower cost unless flight
rates are very high.
Bill
On Wed, Dec 25, 2019 at 9:01 PM Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Wed, 25 Dec 2019, Keith Henson wrote:
Superheavy/Starship should be able to get to that cost, or lower...
...The two problems are the launch rate for a serious power satellite
project is high, and the other problem is how much damage hydrocarbon
rockets do to the ozone?
There's nothing about vertical-takeoff rockets that inherently dictates a
low launch rate. A good V-2 crew, in a safe area with no threat of air
attack, could launch once an hour. And that was a half-baked wartime
design with a lot of touch labor required.
Vertical-launch hydrocarbon rockets, at first glance, ought to be better
for ozone than a wing-supported LH2 airbreather. They'll certainly spend
less time in the upper atmosphere, and should put out less water vapor
than a hydrogen burner and less nitrogen oxides than an airbreather.
(Although a careful look at the numbers would be needed to make sure.)
Henry