[lamontcg]

You're assuming a large demand for space tourism and little suborbital hops. Once the novelty wears off and the 0.1% who have the money and want to experience it have gotten their ride, then what is their business model exactly?

[cstross]

If SpaceX get their launch cost per Falcon 9 down to the close order of $1M, and succeed in re-using Dragon 2 for multiple flights, then that's a price on the order of $100-200K per seat to orbit.

If Bigelow then have an inflatastation on orbit -- made a whole lot more plausible with Falcon Heavy on-stream and semi-reusable -- then there's a plausible market for real space tourism (as in, stay in a hotel for multiple nights in orbit) for under $1M, possibly considerably less.

What's the next step? Some kind of Earth Departure Stage and a lunar fly-by?

Just speculating here, but Blue Origin's current rocket is purely sub-orbital. It'll tap out the $100K space tourism market really fast. While SpaceX is building a commercial launch manifest and the infrastructure to support orbital and trans-lunar space tourism as a hobby on the side (I'd expect Musk to go this route with free rides for billionaire potential investors when he's gearing up for Mars).

Oh, I'll bet National Geographic is already thinking about ways and means of recording and monetizing a "Return to the Moon" mega-documentary before 2030. It'd probably be do-able by 2022 for on the order of $1Bn with Apollo-levels of risk and the equivalent of a Block 1 LEM (two astronauts to surface, 24-48 hour excursion, no rover); assume half the money goes on developing the LEM and the rest on Falcon Heavy launches. By 2030 it'll be the same price, but a whole lot more comprehensive (a 4-6 body crew, multi-week excursion).

Utility of Blue Origin's current platform in developing such a "real" space tourism market? Approximately zip.

[lamontcg]

Yeah this is basically what I'm thinking. It seems like Blue Origin might be able to do some brisk trade for awhile in Russian billionnaires who can drop $100k to hop up into space and impress whatever supermodel they're trying to woo this week. I don't see that ever getting to a launch-a-day.

I did look up the company, though, and they plan on building vehicles that can compete with the Falcon 9. At that point the competition would start to get more interesting since that opens the doors to everything you just mentioned SpaceX could wind up doing. SpaceX is launching Falcon 9's now though...

[bdcravens]

Shipping perhaps? Is there a place for science that is covered by satellites or weather balloons? Perhaps deploy emergency connectivity faster than a satellite can be launched? Just thinking out loud here, I'm sure there's tons of applications I haven't considered.

[jdiez17]

>Perhaps deploy emergency connectivity faster than a satellite can be launched?

New Shepard points straight up for the entire duration of the burn (110 seconds), because the goal is to get the payload to just barely 100km and then land more or less in the same spot. Any object on this ballistic trajectory will fall down to Earth very quickly.

Project Loon is better for communications equipment - the balloons stay up for longer, they are closer to the ground (essential for low power applications), and they're much cheaper to launch. https://www.google.com/loon/

[lxa2]

the 0.1% could be hundreds of thousands of people?