You mean there isn’t enough support for exploration even though SLS / Orion are ostensibly meant for exploration? That may be true. Congress as a whole might be happy to pay the same amount of money for real results instead of pork, but the people on the space subcommittees wouldn’t be.

I agree this would take a long time to lead to orbital RLVs, but not necessarily that it would be a small market. If they can make it cheap (say $1000/seat eventually), then lots of people would be interested in a suborbital flight. We know this because hundreds of people have already paid VG deposits even at $200,000 / seat. And if they can’t make suborbital cheap, then they probably can’t make orbital substantially cheaper either.

For the design to evolve I believe they will need a government R&D contract.

Or a government propellant launch contract. If there is a large market for propellant in orbit (and 100mT a year is a small amount for an exploration program, but a huge amount for a 1mT orbital RLV), then that gives you a decent business case for private RLV investment.

The market is unlikely to drive design evolution because until costs are much lower the market will not increase in size.

True for commercial clients, but not for the USG. Both your approach and mine would rely on USG funding for R&D, one directly and the other indirectly.

That leaves political realities. I think the space advocate community needs to come to a consensus (LEO vs BLEO) and apply some effective lobbying. It can’t hurt.

It couldn’t hurt, but I’m afraid it is unlikely to happen.

Sorry, but I don’t think any amount of lobbying is going to cut through the current porkfest that what seems like most space-oriented Congress pollies engage in. The true game changer is going to be SpaceX. Interesting that a single company driven by a single person can change so much. That’s happened before in history and I believe we’re seeing it again. As I noted in another recent post, SpaceX flies April 30 or maybe May and success will lead to CRS and an operational capability. Game changing! They may then still be the new kids on the block but they will have shown everyone that they’re serious. Even DCSCA may agree – well at least partially

That leaves political realities. I think the space advocate community needs to come to a consensus (LEO vs BLEO) and apply some effective lobbying. It can’t hurt.

>>But that doesn’t mean demand generated by the USG (an exploration program being an obvious way to do it) cannot lead to RLVs.>>

there is not enough demand for USG launches in exploration…there is no political support for it RGO

“That is the old NASA (SLI) or even NACA approach and I think it would be doomed to fail given political realities and much slower than a market-driven approach even if those difficulties could be surmounted. It’s not that it couldn’t work in theory, just that those providing the funding (public as well as private) would not be willing to wait for it.”

What I would add is that if SpaceX proves out their commercial satellite operations, and is able to separately perfect reusability of any kind for Falcon 9/Heavy (even 2 flights of one 1st stage would be a dramatic reduction in cost), then the market will start responding within the length of time it takes for new satellite orders committed to the new RLV (i.e. around 5 years).

Another initiative to watch is the Air Force Reusable Booster System (RBS). Though NASA has a hard time keeping transportation programs on track, the Air Force is a little better. And though it’s still a government program, it could spin off into industry if proven.

Lastly, when Virgin Galactic and the small sub-orbital reusable vehicle makers finally start carrying paying payloads, we’ll get an idea about the market size for that type of business, and if there is demand for currently unknown spin-offs (the advantage of commercial operations vs government). Because the vehicles are reusable, the amount of time it takes to try out a business plan becomes very short and relatively inexpensive, so reusability promotes business experimentation far more than government operations do.

It’s going to be an exciting decade ahead of us on many fronts.

It is true that development of RLVs with EELV (or even just Falcon 9) class payloads will take a very long time, longer than the investment horizon of the private sector. But that doesn’t mean demand generated by the USG (an exploration program being an obvious way to do it) cannot lead to RLVs.

Two reasons stick out in my mind:

1) The length of the road ony means incremental development will be necessary, which has always been the logical way to do it.

2) Sustained exploration for at least a decade, maybe two may be necessary to lead to Falcon 9 RLVs.

In fact, the next generation of RLVs are not going to be revenue producers, they will only demonstrate the technologies and point the direction toward the appropriate design strategies.

That is the old NASA (SLI) or even NACA approach and I think it would be doomed to fail given political realities and much slower than a market-driven approach even if those difficulties could be surmounted. It’s not that it couldn’t work in theory, just that those providing the funding (public as well as private) would not be willing to wait for it.

The XCOR approach shows an alternative: incremental development of ever more powerful non-orbital system that each generate some revenue. They didn’t get into aircraft rocket racing just for the fun of it, but because it was a step on the way towards Lynx, which is itself a step on the way towards first a reusable first stage for use with an expendable upper stage and then a fully reusable TSTO RLV.

The development period for the RLVs is much to long to respond to current demand. In fact, the next generation of RLVs are not going to be revenue producers, they will only demonstrate the technologies and point the direction toward the appropriate design strategies. Some private investors have the money to build demonstrators for some aspects of the technology (Armadillo, Blue Origin, etc) but for more addvanced vehicles this can only be done with government funding, like the X-15, DC-X, X-33, X-34, X-37, etc.

no. Boeing was tempted on at least two occassions to jump into the passenger jet market…there are B47 and B52 passenger “models”…but they always resisted until the technology and operational experience had come far enough along. RGO

“LOL the only DoD launch operations are missiles in silos and “boomers”…A taste of Armageddon. RGO”

DCSCA was probably meaning Area 51, or some other “conspiracy” facility that supposedly houses secret rockets for the DoD. Of course only he knows it exists…