Space Is Expensive
Space Costs Are Dropping, Capabilities Are Rising
By Dave McDaniel, everyone’s sorta-smart space guy.
(Sorta-Smart = Maybe knows what he’s talking about, sometimes.)
Contents
By The Numbers
Price Theory
Rockets Up, Prices Down
Rocket Economics 101
Demand
Random (But Related) Note
Space Is The Answer
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Space is expensive.
Like all advancing technologies, costs will go down.
By The Numbers
Let’s start with an analogy.
You’ve probably heard how meager was the computing power aboard the Apollo moon landers back in the 70s. Those missions had 4 KB of memory, with 32 KB hard drives. (KB is a Kilobyte, or a thousand ‘bytes’ of digital data, a term now rarely used.)
Today we typically use either MB (Megabyte, a million bytes) or GB (Gigabyte, a billion bytes). Lately we’ve even been breaking out the TB (Terabyte, a trillion bytes) and, for the big data centers, PB (Petabyte, a quadrillion bytes) and beyond.
We humans love our big-number prefixes.
When it comes to the systems used on Apollo, for comparison an average phone these days has something on the order of 32 GB of storage memory. Eight million times that of the lunar landers.
Cost-wise, engineers got the Apollo computer module ‘down’ to $15,000 in the end.
The cost per GB of memory today is roughly $4.
Meaning back then the memory in your phone would’ve been worth, strictly by the numbers, something on the order of $120B.
Your cell pricing plan doesn’t sound too bad now, does it?
That’s to say nothing of the chip technology, the display tech, the cameras, the software, the (most especially) internet connectivity, and all else that would’ve made your phone a state secret and a national treasure back in 1970.
Price Theory
Point is, computers became important.
We found value in them, we wanted more of them, so we kept throwing money at them to make them better and better and, critically, more affordable. Eventually getting them to the point where they are today.
Computers are the foundation of our entire modern society.
Satellites, interestingly, are the thing most driving space innovation right now.
Why?
Once again we’re back to the demand for our personal devices and conveniences.
Our demand for faster, better, more-data, more-coverage communication connections (that very internet connectivity) for our computers, devices (phones, TVs, etc.), has driven a veritable arms race in the satellite—and therefore rocket launch—arena.
This is good.
We’ll take it.
It demonstrates how demand drives results.
Because of this we’ve continued to develop more and more cost-effective launch systems to get those satellites into orbit. Which means the cost per kilogram to launch a payload into space has been dropping like a mic at a rap battle.
Rockets Up, Prices Down
Here’s a sampling of what launch costs have looked like over the last four decades:
Space Shuttle (1981) $ 85,000/kg
Minotaur-C (1994) $ 35,000/kg
Space Shuttle (1995) $ 27,000/kg
Delta II (1997) $ 19,000/kg
Falcon 1 (2006) $ 10,000/kg
Atlas V (2016) $ 6,000/kg
Falcon 9 (2017) $ 2,000/kg
Falcon Heavy (2023) $ 950/kg
Pretty sweet example of that cost vs demand thing.
And the drop is accelerating. SpaceX’s Starship will bring cost down to just $100.
NASA’s goal for 2040 is “tens of dollars per kilogram”.
Dang.
Rocket Economics 101
But it’s only Rocket Economics 101.
Economies of scale.
A virtuous cycle; more launches lead to lower costs, which lead to cheaper payloads, which lead to more launches and so it goes. The more rockets pounding launch pads around the globe, the faster we send more and more payloads into space, the higher the launch cadence, the better we do.
Always more.
Never less.
Why would we ever consider slowing down?
If we run out of science missions and satellites, start building the refueling stations we’ll need in orbit, get our next-gen space stations underway, fire up the first zero-gee manufacturing facilities, begin putting things up there we know we’ll need for our moon adventures and on and on.
Affordability and sustainability go hand in hand; we get there by building an ecosystem that demands it.
Launch providers and payloads, in conjunction with destinations such as space stations, depots, lunar goals and other infrastructure—that’s the pressure that will make it happen.
Demand
We allocate resources according to what we deem important. Time and again, throughout history, we’ve shown we will pay for—and get—the things we want. From the personal all the way up to the level of nations.
We humans are resourceful.
Continuing advancements will define our comprehensive offworld presence. Many more activities will be needed. Many, many more things to spend money on.
Space is expensive.
Question is, will we decide it’s worth it?
Random (But Related) Note
Three of the largest companies in the world today are luxury brands. (LVMH, Dior, Hermes, to name them.) Luxury firms in general were more profitable in 2022 than American tech firms.
Yeah.
These are companies that sell things like fashion, perfumes, cosmetics, jewelry … you know, fancy stuff. We’re apparently willing to pay handsomely for things like that.
Which is great, I’m not knocking it. I like fancy stuff too. But it does illustrate a point.
If we’ll pay thousands for a purse, surely we can spare a few bucks, as a civilization, to make sure that—one day—we’re able to flash that pricy purse on a lunar vacation.
Right?
Otherwise we'll just have to keep putting on airs some fancy place here on Earth.
A castle.
A yacht.
Monaco.
Same-old same-old.
Forever Earth.
How passé.
Space Is The Answer
And so we have our marching orders.
Space is far too monumental, far too difficult, far too challenging to let slip even an erg of momentum. With anything as impossible as space, easing up, deciding maybe it’s a little too tough now that we think about it, that maybe we should take a step back and figure out a few other things first …
That sort of thinking, when it comes to something as hard as space, something as vital as space, risks the whole enterprise sliding backwards.
Not on our watch.
And so I say More.
Never slowing, always faster.
(Is my passion bleeding through?)
That’s the only way we become extraplanetary.
Many questions and uncertainties stand in our way.
To them all, remember:
Space is the answer.
Dave
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