Possible sign at the horizon

Please refer to the table Sev has posted in the discussion "Possible Craft" under "Bigelow's America's Space Prize" - the table shows a private enterprise to have much lest costs per kg than each governmental or semi-governmental spacecraft.

I choosed the title "POSSIBLE signs..." to consider this not to be significant and possibly to prove to be different at the second or some further glance.

But if the coming years will strengthen the image then this will mean that the financial barriers have been reduced to a significant amount for all actors, all activities and all purposes - not for travels only.

As a consequence space-oriented financial ressources will be cumulated in the private space sector and not in the public space sector.

I'm referring to Sev's table - it's concerning orbital flights and not suborbital ones: perhaps the reduction already begins to become valid for the orbit. This might be accelerated by the America's Space Prize within a couple of years.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

If and when SpaceX delivers on their promise of cheap suborbital and orbital launch n establish a good track record, a major shake up in terms of mindset would happen.

I used alot of 'ifs' n 'whens' because the private space industry had made alot of promises and publicity in the past and failed to deliver. In SpaceX's case, I have to agree that something different is going on. This is because a very good team has been put together and most importantly, Elon Musk's deep pockets. Alot of the so-called private launch companies had failed in the past as their funding was tied with private investors which demanded tight performance milestones to be met. In SpaceX's case, progress has been constant and funding is not a major issue.

The change in mindset will be forced upon the encumberent companies. This is the situation when there is a new entrant in the market which can offer the same services at cheaper cost.