Blue Origin thread.

[tater]

The trouble for this lark (good term) is that it's so very short duration.

Spend 50k to be short-roped up Everest and you're at least experiencing it for some weeks. Of course you get to tell stories to people for some multiple of that (there are a % of people who do it for that reason, vs personal reasons). I would assume most of the NS customers want cocktail party cred, so they can spend very little time in actual flight, and rack up many multiples of that in retelling the story.

At the amount it likely costs, zero regular people will do it. The closer they can get the 11 minute ride to the cost of say a 1st class airline ticket, the more regular people who are space nuts might save up for it.

Honestly, the sort of people that would have to make a real effort to afford it—would be more interested in it for personal reasons (and would be more likely to be the sort of people you'd want to hang out with).

[CatastrophicFailure]

21 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Are you seriously trying to argue that space tourism isn't exclusively for the super-rich?

No, I’m saying each company probably has an entire department of CPAs or folks with other various economics degrees saying, “ok, if we charge x-000,000, we can potentially attract y number of customers, at z revenue. Now, if we change x+100,000, our customer base shrinks too far to be profitable, if we charge x-100,000, we have tons of customers but we go bankrupt in the process.” Dig?

I just get really tired of this “it’s only for the super-rich, so it’s bad!!1!” nonsense. Yeah, it’s for the super rich, cuz it’s freaking expensive, cuz it’s brand new. So were cell phones, automobiles, big-screen TVs, etc. SOMEone needs to foot the bill to start the price rolling downhill for the rest of us. 

‘Member that line in Back to the Future? “Pfft, NObody has two TVs!”

[mikegarrison]

3 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

I just get really tired of this “it’s only for the super-rich, so it’s bad!!1!” nonsense.

I didn't assign any value judgment. I just said that it's only for the super-rich (and pointed out that the people bankrolling it are super-rich, which is probably IMO no coincidence).

[CatastrophicFailure]

55 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

 

Does it ever seem like maybe their idea of what would be an affordable lark might be a little distorted?

 

4 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

I didn't assign any value judgment. I just said that it's only for the super-rich (and pointed out that the people bankrolling it are super-rich, which is probably IMO no coincidence).

Sounds a bit judgy to me. 

The super-rich are the target of “affordable” because the super rich are the only ones who CAN afford it until the prices comes down because the super rich HAVE afforded it. 

[mikegarrison]

4 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

The super-rich are the target of “affordable” because the super rich are the only ones who CAN afford it until the prices comes down because the super rich HAVE afforded it. 

Rich people buying things does not make prices come down. They have been buying private jets for decades and huge yachts for even more decades, but those haven't suddenly become affordable to the average bartender or store clerk yet. Space is not going to magically become as cheap as going down the street to the park.

 

5 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Sounds a bit judgy to me. 

It's not. You are reading what you want to read into it, I guess.

[SOXBLOX]

18 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Rich people buying things does not make prices come down. They have been buying private jets for decades and huge yachts for even more decades, but those haven't suddenly become affordable to the average bartender or store clerk yet. Space is not going to magically become as cheap as going down the street to the park.

Exactly. Prices are determined by supply and demand. I guess you could argue that since demand = amount of money thrown at a project, rich people can create demand, but I think there aren't enough rich prospective space travelers for this to work.

A great way to boost the industry would be to pass legislation forcing everyone to go on a mandatory space vacation. But that's artificial demand. 

[mikegarrison]

1 minute ago, SOXBLOX said:

Exactly. Prices are determined by supply and demand. I guess you could argue that since demand = amount of money thrown at a project, rich people can create demand, but I think there aren't enough rich prospective space travelers for this to work.

A great way to boost the industry would be to pass legislation forcing everyone to go on a mandatory space vacation. But that's artificial demand. 

It can work, sometimes. Let's say there are no cars, but some rich person wants one. They can perhaps pay someone to build one, but as a one-off crafted item, it will be expensive. If enough people want them, though, then it makes sense to build a factory. Economies of scale come into play and the price comes down. That further drives demand, and so you have a feedback loop that continues to lower the price.

But that sort of thing can't lower the price infinitely. As the old saying goes, you can't sell something at a loss but hope to make it up with volume.

Trips to space are not expensive because they are rare. Instead, they are rare because they are expensive.

[CatastrophicFailure]

47 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

It's not. You are reading what you want to read into it, I guess.

I’m reading into it what’s there to be read. There is implicit bias in how it’s phrased. 
 

48 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Rich people buying things does not make prices come down. They have been buying private jets for decades and huge yachts for even more decades, but those haven't suddenly become affordable to the average bartender or store clerk yet. Space is not going to magically become as cheap as going down the street to the park.

Yachts and private jets aren’t anything new, they’re offshoots off the exclusivity that such travel once was, because there are mass options available today. 

16 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Economies of scale come into play and the price comes down. That further drives demand, and so you have a feedback loop that continues to lower the price.

Exactly. 

16 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Trips to space are not expensive because they are rare. Instead, they are rare because they are expensive.

And so something needs to interrupt that loop, if only a little. Right now, today, the only way you could Maybe go to space is to pay the Russians dozens of millions, at what, two or three trips over the last couple decades? Now come along Blue and Virgin, offering (or at least planning to) dozens of trips a year for a few hundred thousand. Even half a million is way, WAY less than the current market. 

Blue and Virgin have presumably done their homework, and figured they can make their systems work for a few hundred thousand per ticket. The respective Grand Poobahs may have their flaws, but they are not idiots. If their adopted business models are indeed successful, then those early high-margin half-million tickets fund the construction of more SpaceShips and New Shepherds, and eventually they can sell lower-margin tickets for “only” a hundred thousand, because they’re flying a hundred times a year now. 

They’re smart people, and smart people tend to employ other smart people. 

[magnemoe]

19 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Rich people buying things does not make prices come down. They have been buying private jets for decades and huge yachts for even more decades, but those haven't suddenly become affordable to the average bartender or store clerk yet. Space is not going to magically become as cheap as going down the street to the park.

Its two sort of expensive items, its the ones who are very as in billions$ expensive to develop but have an huge market, like computer chips and smart phones. 
Then you have stuff who are not very expensive to develop but expensive to build and maintain like mansions, yachts and private jet versions of commercial jets. 
The cheap to mass produce but expensive to develop stuff makes no sense to develop for the 1%. 

Space travel however is like planes was 60 years ago except they did not destroy the plane at destination  With a few exceptions like ww2 gliders. 
Planes back then was very dangerous, the trips was expensive compared to modern day business class and much less comfortable. 
Space travel will end up being much more expensive than an long range business class ticket but way way cheaper than today. 

[tater]

 

[mikegarrison]

LOL. I still can't believe some of you are arguing that this isn't a game for the super rich.

[tater]

16 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

LOL. I still can't believe some of you are arguing that this isn't a game for the super rich.

Unless the price literally drops an order of magnitude, no normal people can ever do it, and yeah, it's a tiny—vanishingly tiny—niche market.

Wonder of Jeff's gonna go on the first hop, lol.

[CatastrophicFailure]

52 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

LOL. I still can't believe some of you are arguing that this isn't a game for the super rich.

 Literally no one said that. 

We said this is how it needs to start if anyone else is ever going to get a chance. 

37 minutes ago, tater said:

Unless the price literally drops an order of magnitude, no normal people can ever do it, and yeah, it's a tiny—vanishingly tiny—niche market.

Like cell phones circa 1980? 

[mikegarrison]

3 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Like cell phones circa 1980? 

Or like supersonic airline travel. Sure, the  Concorde was really spendy when it first flew in the 1970s, but by the 1990s everybody was flying supersonic.

[CatastrophicFailure]

11 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Or like supersonic airline travel. Sure, the  Concorde was really spendy when it first flew in the 1970s, but by the 1990s everybody was flying supersonic.

There are other ways to cross the Atlantic. The only way to see space is... to go to space. 

[tater]

Cell phones are a product with a possible (and realized) mass market.

Space tourism is, IMHO, a possible "killer app" for spaceflight, but it has some very difficult hurdles.

If the goal is "selling spaceflight," the launch market is finite, and frankly not worth the trouble. Huge risks for a total annual market revenue that represents a single weekend of revenue for mass market companies. Tourism (or travel) is huge in comparison. Travel/tourism is a couple trillion dollar industry.

Safety is number 1. It has to be really, really safe. People are remarkably irrational about risk. They ignore large risks they take all the time, then freak out about some other risk that for them is orders of magnitude lower. In the earlier days of airline travel, the risk was far, far higher than now, but people traveled anyway. Seems like the bar needs to be higher even for space travel, though slightly higher risk might still sell. Maybe. The other risk issue is that almost all air crashes are pilot error. Crashes where something decides not to work are more likely to suspend all travel that way until found and addressed. If you can't tell, I think this is a very, very long pole problem.

Cost is number 2, and for a mass market, it requires mass market pricing.

Suborbital space tourism is a niche unless it comes for the P2P ride. You get a regular vacation, and also get a cocktail party story. I can see the math working out on P2P cost, but I can't imagine it being safe enough. I'm super happy to be proved wrong, but air travel has set a very high bar, indeed.

Orbital+ space tourism can cost more and still be mass market, because the trip includes lodging for the transit portion. It maps more to cruise ship travel than air. It shares the safety problem (with added failure modes and nasty ways to get killed). I could see the cost closing on that, but the safety is even harder than suborbital, so even less likely.

13 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

There are other ways to cross the Atlantic. The only way to see space is... to go to space. 

See above. The most likely mass market for space travel is P2P—and the safety bar is incredibly high. In the end, it's just another way to cross the Atlantic, except you get to also go to space.

Anyone who can make suborbital tourist flights (like VG/BO are trying) that are cheap enough and safe enough to actually be a mass market might as well do P2P.

The Concorde was too expensive for mass travel. If it was just as cheap, everyone would fly that way (I would). It was all about cost. Mass markets require mass market pricing.

[mikegarrison]

7 hours ago, tater said:

The Concorde was too expensive for mass travel. If it was just as cheap, everyone would fly that way (I would). It was all about cost. Mass markets require mass market pricing.

My point was more that there are actual physics that mean supersonic travel will *always* be more expensive than subsonic travel. It's not like the price of a phone.

And space? Even more physics burden. Space is never going to suddenly get as cheap as flying to New Jersey, because the *unavoidable* energy expenditure is always going to be much higher.

You want space to get cheap? Make energy cheap. Get fusion power working or something. Create a post-energy-scarcity society.

Edited May 5, 2021 by mikegarrison

[tater]

6 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

My point was more that there are actual physics that mean supersonic travel will *always* be more expensive than subsonic travel. It's not like the price of a phone.

True, I wasn't trying to imply otherwise, it's just that Concorde was the only example, so no need to generalize to SSTs, should have said "SSTs are too expensive for mass travel."

 

6 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

And space? Even more physics burden. Space is never going to suddenly get as cheap as flying to New Jersey, because the *unavoidable* energy expenditure is always going to be much higher.

Propellant mass for something like SS is on the order of 20X higher than the prop mass of a long haul aircraft (seems to be 150-250t). Even packed full of people (A380 numbers) it seems like seat prices would need to be 10-20X higher (so from economy to first class prices) if it was all at the cost of Jet A (RP-1 is close). But 80% of prop costs are in fact LOX, which is ~4X cheaper than Jet A ($160/ton vs $650). Still, we're off by 5X or more. Dunno, maybe of they make their own LOX they can do that for wholesale pricing though I have no idea what LOX mark up is.

That'd be for space, P2P would not need that sort of propellant mass, but we're still gonna be in the... 3-10X cost range for a load of props? Seems like you could plausibly get seat prices down towards the seat price someone pays on an airliner, but nothing like economy. Shotwell said "economy plus" prices, so I assume they have done the math, but maybe business class might be possible P2P (which is 2-3X economy?). That is expensive for the average flyer now, but I think that 30-40 years ago the actual ticket price in constant dollars was probably higher than it is today. When I flew places in the 80s I felt like a scumbag unless I wore a jacket, for example (I'd go casual flying home from college and not wear a tie all the time (though my mom always liked it if I did)). Yeah, looks like airline prices have dropped in half per mile since 1980. Maybe you could get prices for P2P to the level of mass travel in the 70s, which would be many people, but not the bus-like quality of modern air travel.

That all assumes somehow solving the safety issue, which I think makes the cost issue look trivial in comparison.

For space? Yeah, gonna be more expensive by a ways. Every place you visit has to be constructed, and is a spacecraft from a design/safety standpoint, even if sitting on the ground on the Moon.

 

6 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

You want space to get cheap? Make energy cheap. Get fusion power working or something. Create a post-energy-scarcity society.

Yeah, for truly mass space travel for humans something like that is required, though I tend to think post-scarcity (which on-topic is sort of the Bezos goal of moving industry to space) and cheap access to space is a chicken and egg issue. I think we need cheap access to space to get to that point, because terrestrial resources are already controlled and the economics of extracting them don't get us there.

[mikegarrison]

1 minute ago, tater said:

[P2P Starship] Shotwell said "economy plus" prices, so I assume they have done the math

LOL. No way would I trust that. When sales "does the math", the numbers usually come out any damn way they want them to come out. Anyway, P2P has so many other hurdles that it's just a pipe dream. Let's start with how you evacuate a load of passengers in 90 seconds with half the exits blocked, and somehow get them to a safe location out there on your converted oil rig.

[tater]

1 minute ago, mikegarrison said:

LOL. No way would I trust that. When sales "does the math", the numbers usually come out any damn way they want them to come out. Anyway, P2P has so many other hurdles that it's just a pipe dream. Let's start with how you evacuate a load of passengers in 90 seconds with half the exits blocked, and somehow get them to a safe location out there on your converted oil rig.

Yeah, I was taking that as a "give them the benefit of the doubt" thing to mess with the numbers. Like I said, the safety issues make actual seat cost problems look trivial in comparison... and I forgot to mention regulatory issues as well, that might be harder than the safety part, lol.

[mikegarrison]

3 minutes ago, tater said:

Yeah, I was taking that as a "give them the benefit of the doubt" thing to mess with the numbers. Like I said, the safety issues make actual seat cost problems look trivial in comparison... and I forgot to mention regulatory issues as well, that might be harder than the safety part, lol.

To give them their due, almost all the relevant regulatory issues have been hard-earned by being actual demonstrated safety issues.

[tater]

4 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

To give them their due, almost all the relevant regulatory issues have been hard-earned by being actual demonstrated safety issues.

I was thinking just of the regulations novel to P2P, like the fact the "aircraft" is a ballistic, kinetic energy weapon roughly aimed at some large city, with overflight/etc a possibility. I wasn't even thinking of the normal safety related regs like egress, etc.

[mikegarrison]

10 minutes ago, tater said:

I was thinking just of the regulations novel to P2P, like the fact the "aircraft" is a ballistic, kinetic energy weapon roughly aimed at some large city

"Novel"? I have a date for you to consider: 9/11/2001

A Starship isn't a "Rod From God". It's too draggy and not nearly dense enough to make an efficient kinetic kill weapon.

PS. My apologies. We are now drifting pretty far from Blue Origin.

Edited May 5, 2021 by mikegarrison

[tater]

8 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

"Novel"? I have a date for you to consider: 9/11/2001

At least taking over a SS would not be a thing, as it has no pilot. new regs would need to lock up the software access so it's impossible to hack.

I suppose other flights like MH370 need to address the possibility of a bad actor with legitimate control of the software.

Still, normal flight for a P2P ballistic transport has something that needs new regulations since Newton is doing the driving from some seconds after launch until the landing burn. Airliners can fall out of the sky over my house, but there are longstanding ideas about air safety, etc that have made this normal—and all the safety regulations are alreadyin place. I think many countries would consider a vehicle shot at them like an ICBM different, and would want to create new rules. Even if the rules cover the same possible problems (vehicles falling from the sky), the fact that they have to write new laws is a novel hurdle since the laws are already written for aircraft.

Edited May 5, 2021 by tater

[tater]

First flight with people July 20.

It's bidding for the first seat not used by someone at BO, the rest of the riders will be BO people I assume.

So no announcement on price, this is to raise money for charity.