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Skylon

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Regarding used crew Dragons.  I wonder what the market is like for orbital space tourism?  Used booster, new second stage, used crew dragon, 5-7 passengers at maybe $10-20 million per seat?  Life support should be adequate for them to stay over 8+ hours in space.  To me that would be more attractive than Blue Origin's or Virgin Galactic's sub-orbital flight with only a few minutes of weightlessness, even if it was 2 or 3 times the price.   (Not that I have even $100,000 spare anyway).

This wouldn't need to be a long term program, just for however many years it takes until they have a manned starship version available as an alternative.  (That could be a few years, even if starship + superheavy make a success test flight next year).  Commercial passenger flights to ISS is another possibility.  SpaceX can probably undercut other bidders there, and might be able to re-use crew Dragon that way.  

   

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47 minutes ago, AVaughan said:

Regarding used crew Dragons.  I wonder what the market is like for orbital space tourism?  Used booster, new second stage, used crew dragon, 5-7 passengers at maybe $10-20 million per seat?  Life support should be adequate for them to stay over 8+ hours in space.  To me that would be more attractive than Blue Origin's or Virgin Galactic's sub-orbital flight with only a few minutes of weightlessness, even if it was 2 or 3 times the price.   (Not that I have even $100,000 spare anyway).

This wouldn't need to be a long term program, just for however many years it takes until they have a manned starship version available as an alternative.  (That could be a few years, even if starship + superheavy make a success test flight next year).  Commercial passenger flights to ISS is another possibility.  SpaceX can probably undercut other bidders there, and might be able to re-use crew Dragon that way.  

   

Used f9 is somewhere between 50 to 67 million, divide that by 6 is ~10 million per person. We don't know exactly how much a Crew Dragon cost. However, NASA pays 56 million per seat I think, and about a third or a quarter goes to paperworks. Launch cost per person will likely be 30-40 million, at least. Maybe in the upper 20s if you risk a used Crew Dragon.

How much more for insuramce is still a big factor.

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Reusing a Crew Dragon spacecraft shouldn't be a problem, if the spacecraft is meticulously inspected (and refurbished if necessary) between each flight. Even just flying each spacecraft twice would probably reduce the cost of flying regular crew rotations by a significant amount. Of course, NASA also stands for Nice And Safe Attitude, so they may just not allow crewed spacecraft to be reused at all.

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34 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Reusing a Crew Dragon spacecraft shouldn't be a problem, if the spacecraft is meticulously inspected (and refurbished if necessary) between each flight. Even just flying each spacecraft twice would probably reduce the cost of flying regular crew rotations by a significant amount. Of course, NASA also stands for Nice And Safe Attitude, so they may just not allow crewed spacecraft to be reused at all.

If Crew Dragon reuse indeed turns out to be safe and all, they might permit such a use. Like they permit used boosters for launching stuff.

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3 hours ago, AVaughan said:

Used booster, new second stage, used crew dragon, 5-7 passengers at maybe $10-20 million per seat? To me that would be more attractive than Blue Origin's or Virgin Galactic's sub-orbital flight with only a few minutes of weightlessness, even if it was 2 or 3 times the price.

Huh? You think $10-20M is "2 or 3 times" the price that Virgin or Sheppard will be charging? I don't know what they will be charging exactly, but I'm pretty sure $10-20M is more like 20-100x the price.

50 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Reusing a Crew Dragon spacecraft shouldn't be a problem, if the spacecraft is meticulously inspected (and refurbished if necessary) between each flight. Even just flying each spacecraft twice would probably reduce the cost of flying regular crew rotations by a significant amount. Of course, NASA also stands for Nice And Safe Attitude, so they may just not allow crewed spacecraft to be reused at all.

As far as I know, everyone is expecting the CST-100 to be reused. It's the saltwater landing factor that is the big problem for Crew Dragon.

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3 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

As far as I know, everyone is expecting the CST-100 to be reused. It's the saltwater landing factor that is the big problem for Crew Dragon.

It would have been easier to reuse Crew Dragon when it was expected to propulsively land...on a landing pad, you wouldn't have to worry about saltwater causing problems.

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1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

Huh? You think $10-20M is "2 or 3 times" the price that Virgin or Sheppard will be charging? I don't know what they will be charging exactly, but I'm pretty sure $10-20M is more like 20-100x the price.

1 New Shepard seat is $200,000..?

Edited by Xd the great
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30 minutes ago, Xd the great said:

1 New Shepard seat is $200,000..?

I doubt it, but that could be on the high range I suppose. I'm guessing a lot lower, actually. More like $10-25K. I mean, they expect a reasonable number of people to actually buy these seats. I've seen other people guess $50K.

Edited by mikegarrison
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41 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

I doubt it, but that could be on the high range I suppose. I'm guessing a lot lower, actually. More like $10-25K. I mean, they expect a reasonable number of people to actually buy these seats. I've seen other people guess $50K.

They say it is $250,000

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/7/13/17567872/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-space-tourism-price-ticket

Still, a heafty price to pay for 5 min of 0G and an astronaut badge. At least Starship point to point will be cheaper.

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16 minutes ago, Xd the great said:

They say it is $250,000

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/7/13/17567872/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-space-tourism-price-ticket

Still, a heafty price to pay for 5 min of 0G and an astronaut badge. At least Starship point to point will be cheaper.

Well, if so then I'm way off. I have my doubts how many tickets they could possibly sell at that price.

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4 minutes ago, Xd the great said:

They say they have 600 bookings. Some people (not me) are just rich and can't wait.

I guess. You can buy about about 25 hours of private jet service for that. But a lot of times, stuff like flying around in a private jet is written off as a business expense. I don't see how this could be.

If they make a flight a month, I suppose 600 seats would be almost 10 years of flying. But it still seems like it leaves the service in the "novelty for the super-rich" classification.

Edited by mikegarrison
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9 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Well, if so then I'm way off. I have my doubts how many tickets they could possibly sell at that price.

I've seen numbers all over the place, and BO is being (typically) close-mouthed about it. Seems like if they were smart, they'd undercut or at least match Virgin.

 

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