Talk:Space elevator economics

message: This can be done with a bit of math and a few assumptions:
Supposing that the first SE lifting cost will be around 500$/kg and price for rockets will be around 10,000$/kg, we can suppose that the first cargo will be offered for a price of 5.500$/kg, with a net margin of 5.000$/kg for the first times (before other SE enter in the market - around 3-5 years).
This imply that for repay the startup capital (10 billions $) we need to lift around 2.000.000 kg.
This is around 18 or 24 months of cargos going up at full capacity (20 or 30.000 kg) every 4 days, or around 70 to 100 cargos.
Now, the average number of launches every year is around 80-100, so the lifting capabilities is not enought to lift all the needed cargo.
Also, the request will be stronger because the lower costs, the lower physical requirements of the payloads (less launch stress) and the request to lift the elements for build other SEs.
This imply that for the first years the first SE will be able to work full time, be competitive, profitable and able to repay the startup capital.
Even if the cargos capacity is selled with a lower margin, the time needed to repay the costs will be short - not 2 but 4 or 6 years are not a big problem, compared to the periods needed to repay other big infrastructure projects.
-anon
:The problem is that you only get an elevator after ~14 years of R&D. What do you live on till then? The only good thing I see here is that you don't buy the physical, expensive cable till near the end; but you're still going to have  a big debt, plus interest.--Wolfkeeper 00:09, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Economics of the S.E.

message: (moved from Talk:space elevator)
The article currently says
:"Costs to geostationary orbit are from between $10,000 and $40,000 per kg today. This ... For a space elevator, using the equivalent accounting, the cost ... using the design specs developed by Dr. Bradley Edwards, the cost would be approximately $142/kg"
I would like to document where those numbers came from -- any hints ?
The numbers look identical to the ISR numbers
:"The first space elevator would reduce lift costs immediately to $100 per pound, as compared to current launch costs, which are $10,000-$40,000 per pound, depending upon destination and choice of rocket launch system."
:-- http://www.isr.us/SEHome.asp?m=1
(the [2] referenced link in the article), but ISR says "per pound", the article says "per kg".
Would it be OK to use the ISR "estimates" in the article -- at least until better estimates become available ? (perhaps converted to metric like this:
:"The first space elevator would reduce lift costs immediately to $220 per kg, as compared to current launch costs, which are $20,000-$90,000 per kg."
) ?
-- DavidCary
The $90,000/kg figure is the highest I have seen quoted in the article or here so far.  Maybe that is a Shuttle figure!
There was once a version of the Economics section which made it plain that the costs quoted for the elevator were marginal lifting costs - i.e. the figures make no attempt to recover initial capital expenditure.  I have been unable to work out from the Edwards figures whether the "operating costs" figure includes the cost of electricity.  As many aspects of operating costs would not be related to the actual tonnage lifted I would have expected two figures in the Edwards paper - fixed and variable.  At least one person here thinks the operating costs figure includes electricity but this assertion was not backed up with a quote or reference.
Also, seeing that we are talking about a speculative project which, should it be built, will not to be built for decades, it seems to me that to compare the speculative costs of the elevator with the current costs of rocketry is not the best comparison to be made.  The consensus seems to be that there is a potential to reduce rocketry costs to perhaps 25% of today's costs.  Some private companies are getting involved and they are presumably hoping to make a profit out of their rocketry offerings so it is rational to assume capital financing costs must be factored in to their figures.  Even if this potential to reduce rocketry costs is speculative, even if it takes decades to realise it seems fairer to compare the speculative costs of the future elevator with the speculative costs of future rocketry.
The marginal costs of the elevator will be lower than rocketry and there are significant impacts on the cost depending upon the direction and type of the cargo.  But(!) there is a significant startup capital cost to the elevator.  The question as to economic viability can be reduced to one of where the break even point is:  How many tonnes do we need to move to justify an elevator?
These are issues which need to be reflected in the Economics section. 
Paul Beardsell 10:58, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  20,000-90,000$/kg is just flat incorrect (they almost always cost over 10,000$/kg, although 40,000$/kg seems a bit high, and 90,000$/kg is right-out); rockets do not cost that much (BTW, the shuttle isn't one of the most expensive rockets, although it's not cheap either.  .  It often gets a lot of blame because it was hyped so much and we spent so much developing it, but it's not an incredibly bad craft persay; just a craft not worth the investment we put into it).  The 142$/kg is what you get when you run the numbers for Dr. Edwards' model for a first-generation elevator, as was stated.  If you want to include the numbers for other models, be my guest.  :)  The baseline is important to include because, as power transmission technology advances in later generation elevators, the efficiency of the elevator is relative to the transmission efficiency. Rei 16:05, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Economics: Where did these numbers come from? 

message: This article's had a factual accuracy dispute tag for two months now with no edits to either the article itself or the talk: page. Is the dispute still ongoing, or should I remove the tag and archive this talk now? Bryan 18:30, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: There's been no response to my question for another two months. I'm removing the dispute tag now. Bryan 02:02, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Still in dispute?

message: *Space elevator economics - needs improved wording for clarity and to sound more like an encyclopedia. ··gracefool |☺ 05:41, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  From PNA/Aerospace

message: A recent IEEE Spectrum article ( http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/aug05/0805spac.html)had the following stats:
current cost: $20,000 per kilogram,
After one space elevator: $200 per kilogram,
After multiple space elevators: $10 per kilogram.
I suppose the the total cost reduction is open to debate but a space elevator will reduce the cost by a few orders of magnitude (from thousands to hundreds of dollars per kilogram)
The time and money cost in USD were,
Estimated cost for first Space Elevator: 15 billion USD to construct
Estimated cost for second space elevator: 3 billion USD to construct.
This reduction is cost is due to the fact that the R&D and other costs would be already completed for the first space elevator which should reduce the price of subsequent space elevators.
: (The previous from an unknown author) 
: I think they did not calculate in the necessary 'surrounding' infrastructure (like collision control) and related global regulations (like international deployment insurances), and i also don't believe that even just the pure contruction costs would be anything near 15 billion. You just need to think of the first US Ford class aircraft carrier which was more then twice that figure -- and i think that's a rather small project compared to a S.E., and they could build that very much on established technology (except the eletromagnetic catapult).
: A much better thing to compare with would be the ISS. I lack any figures but think this was several magnitudes over 15 billion. So, if you put the cited 15 billion times 10 then that could be a more realistic figure, but i think it could easily be even way beyond that.
: This also means that it probably has be built by an international consortium. (It could not be fundet as a military facility since it's highly exposed by nature and definitely can not be protected against a variety of attacks.)
: So i wonder who would take it on with a ROI projected serveral decades in the future ... with the recent investment culture, this is hard to imagine. --rosetta  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.48.143.109 (talk) 23:15, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Space Elevator costs (IEEE article) 

message: Please see a large economic evaluation on the main Space elevator article talk page that has been moved there from the main article.  It may have some good points, but needs a lot of work before it can be article material, since much of it is written in first person with reference to second person viewpoint, both of which violate Wikipedia style. Hu 09:43, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Economic Evaluation on main article talk page 

message: :Some systems under development, such as new members of the Long March CZ-2E, offer rates as low as $5,000/kg, but (currently) have high failure rates (30% in the case of the 2E). 
Long March rocket claims there have been no failures since 1996, but I'd rather have someone knowledgable about this stuff double check it than make the changes myself. Taw 00:22, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Factual accuracy 

message: Dr. Edwards wrote an article for IEEE (http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aug05/1690) in which he cited a figure for the achievable reduction in orbital payload costs ($/kg).
The relevant paragraph states, "It all boils down to dollars and cents, of course. It now costs about US $20 000 per kilogram to put objects into orbit. Contrast that rate with the results of a study I recently performed for NASA, which concluded that a single space elevator could reduce the cost of orbiting payloads to a remarkably low $200 a kilogram and that multiple elevators could ultimately push costs down below $10 a kilogram. With space elevators we could eventually make putting people and cargo into space as cheap, kilogram for kilogram, as airlifting them across the Pacific."
The Wiki[edia articles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator_economics) specifies that "Skylon would be suitable to launch cargo and particularly people to low/medium Earth orbit. The space elevator can move only cargo...." This is false. Much of Edwards' book discusses moving humans to orbit via the SE. Satellites can be hoisted by a SE to orbits lower than GSO but would require onboard rockets to adjust their elliptical trajectories into roughly circular orbits.
:I was under the impression that a space elevator could place objects in orbits to the Moon and beyond simply by making the cable longer thereby going past GSO. That seems to be what the article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator) under the section "Launching into outer space" is proposing. If the cargo was released directly into GSO than it would simply stay there and only need rockets to move away from the elevator itself. Is this incorrect or am I misunderstanding your statement? Colincbn 07:21, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  SE Economics 

message: In this article you state "Skylon would be suitable to launch cargo and particularly people to low/medium Earth orbit. The space elevator can move only cargo although it can do so to a much wider range of destinations.[6]".
Why do you claim that a space elevator can only move cargo? I have never seen this statement made anywhere else. Do you have a citation? The citation "6" only refers to the space elevator having the ability to reach a wide range of orbits.Colincbn
:In a lecture given last Tuesday, Tom Nugent of Liftport said that "it would be a long time" before the space elevator could carry humans, because it would be a long time before the car that can protect humans from radiation sufficiently well can be designed and built, and a long time before the cable will be sufficiently strong to lift it. siafu 18:45, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, thank you, but "a long time" & "not able" are not quite the same thing, especially when we are talking about a project that as of yet has no real expected completion date. I am not in any way saying that the elevator, if built, will be able to do this or not be able do that. I am just curious as to why the wording of this article seems to imply that moving people would be impossible for an elevator as apposed to the Skylon space plane. If I am misunderstanding the statement then please forgive me, but if the contention is that it will take a lot of work and/or research then it is my opinion that the above statement is a bit too strong. The fact is that any space elevator at all will likely take a very large amount of time and research to complete, and during that processes I would imagine that a lot of energy would be put into the task of making the possibility of human transport with the elevator viable. Of course I am in no way an expert in any of these fields and therefore cannot contribute any real relevant data. However after reading the Edwards proposal and other recourses regarding the space elevator concept, it seems to me (a layman in this field) that the general consensus is that the elevator would be used for all types of cargo, including human transport. Therefore if this article is contesting that point I feel it would be appropriate to reference outside sources so that individuals like myself with no real background in this field would be able to understand the reasons for the contention. Again I am not trying to argue for or against any points made in this article, I am simply asking for clarification.Colincbn 06:46, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The statement probably is a bit too strong.  But I didn't write it, I was just pointing out what the difficulty is in transporting people on the space elevator, permanent or not.  The problem is simply that the space elevator will be much slower than any other transportation to orbit, and thus will spend more time in the Van Allen belts, exposed to massive amounts of radiation.  It's an engineering problem, not a fundamental physical one, and the goal of course is to transport human cargo.  As for the "expected completion date", liftport actually did the numbers and put together a timetable that can be shifted to the start date of construction: . siafu 12:56, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why not humans? 

message: Much of this article relies on speculation, unpublished synthesis and is bordering on original research. This is totally unencyclopedic. 203.7.140.3 (talk) 08:39, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It wasn't self-published. They were copies of the NIAC papers, which were published by NASA, and ISR were a reliable source anyway.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:04, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

text: here's a link to good supporting material on economics of space flight -- 99.233.186.4 (talk) 15:05, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup 

message: Pegasus cost per launch= US$11 million (1994); payload-to-LEO= 443 kg;
* cost per kg = 11e6/443=$24,830.70 x (convert 1994 to 2004 dollars, assuming 4.9% inflation) = $40063
-- 99.233.186.4 (talk) 04:10, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: here's a link to good supporting material on economics of space flight -- 99.233.186.4 (talk) 15:05, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Costs of current systems (rockets)

message: Non-rocket_launch#Comparison David Woodward (talk) 14:55, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  good table over at Non-rocket_launch 

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replies: text: Hello?  Does this article have any editors who care about it? Guy Macon (talk) 20:05, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I am going to be bold and delete the tags that in my opinion don't fit.  If anyone objects, please revert and we can start discussing it here. Guy Macon (talk) 16:29, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Straw Poll 

message: Why is the "launch loop cost estimates" section even in this article?  A launch loop is a theoretical method of Non-rocket spacelaunch, but it is not a space elevator, and its cost estimates are therefore irrelevant to space elevator economics. I'm going to remove this section, as it is copied verbatim from the Launch loop article anyway. Wingman4l7 (talk) 01:00, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  unnecessary / redundant section 

message: The article should really be labelled as violating NPoV, in that it consists of nothing but uncritically repeating the claims of a single space elevator advocate, Brad Edwards. After the introductory citations to the cost of rockets, every reference is to Edwards. 81.132.227.175 (talk) 22:52, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: NPoV Violation

message: The article says "Early space elevator designs move only cargo, although to a much wider range of destinations", did it mean to a much ***narrower*** range of destinations? I would imagine that the Skylon could go anywhere right? It would help if that were explained a bit better. Fresheneesz (talk) 23:39, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  "a much wider range of destinations" ? 

message: For comparison, in potentially the same time frame as the elevator, the Skylon, a 12,000 kg cargo capacity single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane (not a conventional rocket) is estimated to have an R&D and production cost of about $15 billion.[12] The vehicle has about the same $3,000/kg price tag.
So first, what is similar about 3,000/kg and 220/kg pricetag? Why is chosen this concept (considering it's hardly the cheapest availible, nor current)? If the capacity of the spaceplane is mentioned in comparison, why can't I find the capacity of the space elevator in the article? --HaruMatsuPi (talk) 08:19, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  No sense in comparison 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The article takes into account gravitational potential energy, but not kinetic energy. Any object moving into GSO will need to be accelerated by about 2,5 km/s (the difference between the lateral velocity at ground level and the orbital velocity at GSO). The gravitational potential energy can conceivably be reused, as descending lifts can use regenerative braking. But the lateral/orbital kinetic energy is harder to reuse. So I think any calculation of energy costs should look more at kinetic than potential energy. I am no physicist, but I think a kg accelerated by 2500 m/s equates to 6250000 J. Decelerating on the way down may require the same amount of energy again. Apologies if I am missing out on something obvious here.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.184.68.33 (talk) 15:51, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  How about kinetic energy at GSO?