From: games@max.u.washington.edu
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: DC-1 eventual construction question...
Date: 28 Jan 93 10:39:17 PST
Organization: 
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: max.u.washington.edu

In article <ewright.728179408@convex.convex.com>, ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright) writes:
> In <1993Jan27.113743.1@max.u.washington.edu> games@max.u.washington.edu writes:
> 
>>My question is more on the order of "how do we convince the manufacturers that
>>they will be able to sell these things?"  Including the possibility that 
>>somehow WE as a group step up, and place an order.
> 
> One order is not going to convince Boeing to do anything.  They already
> know they could get one order.  The problem is, one vehicle could fly
> off the *entire* backlog of satellite launch orders, plus soon-to-be
> orders such as Iridium, in short order.  What Boeing wants is to see
> is proof that there's a large enough market to keep the orders coming
> in, and that's not satellites.
> 
Well, lets not limit this to Boeing.  I know less about the development cycle
for MD, and the rest of the people mentioned in earlier posts that want to
build SSTO's.

The real question is again "what specifically will it take"...  two separate 
companies making orders...  5 separate companies...  1 company ordering 10 ...
1 company ordering 20...

Assuming that the airline operational characteristics can be met (or hell,
even double that cost), and assuming that the tourism paper from that U.K.
guy is right, can you make money and pay off one of these things flying
say, 5 guys a week, at $50k per head, with a satellite launch for 1 or 2 mil
every other flight?  Assume that the satelite market goes away right after
you fly off the backlog (enough to pay off the first one?)  Thats 1/4 mil per
flight, for operational revenues of 12.5 mil per year (2 weeks off for 
dedicated maintenance)

Can you put 5 guys up for a week in the payload bay of a proposed SSTO? or
is it more like 10?   

Yes, later, you can put up a hotel can, and fly only saturday to take new
ones, and return old ones, and do something else during the week, but not at
first...  (Besides, at this point, you can make the can (like a tinker toy
set) big enough to run two rotations, and then three, and then...  so as the
cost of the flight goes down, you get more economy in scale...)  And then, the
first few flights, would cost more, in order to take advantage of the scarcity
of the product.  You might even get John Denver for 5 mil for your FIRST 
customer, and then some others at 1 mil each for the first 10 or 15 flights)
(And, yes, I realize that the developer will probably charge more for the
first one, so you can scratch thinking about making gobs of extra money off
these first flights.)

Assume that production SSTO's will cost what an airliner does, $40 mil or so,
right?  After operational expenses, fuel, etc...  The 12.5 mil/year leads
to payoff of the craft in 5 or so years.  How does an airline amoratize
its craft.  They have lasted 20 years, right?  Can you make enough money to
buy a second and a third, and a fourth...

These figures are so rough it hurts my hands to type them.  What are more
reasonable numbers.  Who puts them together?  And again, what are the potential
developers REALLY looking for in order to get into the SSTO production
business?