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by Gooblebrai
980 days ago
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I loved your comments, it's a very interesting take that throws some light into the dynamics of space businesses. Why is the market for suborbital flights not real? Is it because it's more of an expensive recreational thing? Also, do you recommend any interesting resources to learn more about this? |
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There aren't really that many commercial uses for unmanned suborbital flights. For instance if you just want to test something in zero gravity for a short time maybe you can do your experiment faster in a drop tower.
Manned suborbital flights are so expensive that the market is this tiny intersection of people who can afford it and who want to do it. If it was $500 you would get lots of people to sign up, but at current prices I think there's no way to sell enough seats to pay back the development costs of the machine.
Eric Berger wrote a great book on SpaceX
https://www.amazon.com/Liftoff-Desperate-Early-Launched-Spac...
There are a lot of government reports on the subject from the 1980-2000 range where people were considering the needs of launching for the strategic defense initiative, this is a typical one
https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CSAT/documents/O...
but not the one I was really looking for. I would say follow up the references on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reusable_launch_vehicle
and try to dig up more of the same.