What markets is Armadillo aiming for?

Hello, WannabeSpaceCadet,

there is a thread about the Kankoh-Maru in the Technology section and some links are provided in two threads in the Financial Barriers section - the Prof.-Collins-thread and the scientific-estimation-thread.

The Kankoh-Maru would have a launch-weight of 550 tons - which would include the 500 tons of propellant you calculated while 50 passengers would have a weight of 4 tons if they would weigh 80 kilograms in average. So these don't imply contradictions.

I do not know where you got the 300 flights - the Kankoh-Maru is considered to be in use 10 years and there will be several Kankoh-Marus in service in parallel which means that the developments costs would have to be divided by the number of Kankoh-Marus. The theoretical Cost-thread is valid here and there will be economies of scale regarding the production of the vehicles and the propellant.

I would have to look to the links to look for the weight and material - but it has been engineered by engineers seriously plus Kawasaki as one of the japanese space companies was inolved. slycker has said something about it in the XPRIZE in general forum.



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

This document http://www.iaanet.org/symp/berlin/IAA-B4-1509.pdf says that the Kankoh Maru Plus vehicle is assumed to have a lifetime of 600 flights. Where did the $630 million cost to build the vehicle come from?

After reading the .pdf I wondered about something and thought a short while: This comaprison is at the point where a table for synopsis is required:

1. The .pdf is talking about a Kanko Maru Plus while I will have to reread Collins' documents if the term is used there too. If not then it might be perhaps that the .pdf is talking about a modified or changed vehicle.

2. The authors of the .pdf may be talking about the present and thus may have used current costs and prices - while Collins is talking about the situation in 2030 and has included economies of scale not achieved yet but achievable if the market(s) evolve along one or the other concrete and special path. So a comparison imlies the germ of growing anachronisms.

3. If the authors are talking about the present and are using present costs and prices then the comparison is invalid regarding Armadillo Aerospace since they' ve not flown suborbital yet, must develop their vehicle further and need a market for this - the market currentlx is going to Virgin Galactic mainly. When Armadillo have got their own market that market has to evolve to a market of orbital flights too. The number of customers won't be sufficient for a Kankoh-Maru first and needs to eveolve to that scale. This is the only way they can achieve the economies of scale required and involved in Collins' studies.

For these three reasons the comparison is invalid unless a synopsis by a tablke is provided. I will do that perhaps but I am working on other threads currently.



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

I got some of my information from here: http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/kankoh_maru_flight_manual.shtml which looks to be in either 1993 or 1997 dollars. and talks about the $630 million cost.

My point is that any discussion of development & operating costs for an SSTO is going to be a complete WAG until someone actually builds and flys one. So far the US government has spent 10's of billions trying without success. Yet we are expected to take these paper designs seriously?

I appreciate companies like Armadillo, XCOR, Scaled, T/Space & Space-X, who are actually out there doing the pioneering work. They may have private dreams of great grandeur, but right now they are working on practical, near-term vehicles.

The Wright brothers & Curtiss didn't try to sell us 747's

And if they did, their estimates of what it would cost and when it could be operating would be WAY off. Or if their estimates were correct it would have been pure chance. I think it is a big waste of time and effort to even try to do anything other than guess. But sometimes the guessing and dreaming can be fun.

LOTS of fun! But some people may take it a little too seriously. (naming no names )

I'm just glad that the spirit of Phil Bono is alive and well in some way. Medaris was interested in such designs for troop rockets.