Well, if you show per-flight cost as a function of flight rate, that can
be inferred from the slope. :-)
On 2019-03-16 15:22, Henry Spencer wrote:
On Fri, 15 Mar 2019, Keith Henson wrote:
Reaction Engines is the only company that projects a cost to orbit low enough for power satellites to make sense. They think they can get the cost down to a hundred dollars a kg to LEO...
The cynical observer would say that they are the only ones whose
projected startup costs are so colossal that they *must* project far
ahead, to a very high flight volume, to make their case close.
Less-challenging approaches should do better, not worse, given the
same assumptions... but they don't need such rosy assumptions, so they
generally don't project so far beyond the current market.
(Max Hunter used to suggest that cost plots should always show the
marginal cost of a single added flight, as a way to hint at bulk
prices without having to justify massive market expansion, but few do
it.)
Henry