[ExI] cost of SBSP and thorium

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl
Subject: Re: [ExI] cost of SBSP and thorium

On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 08:43:04AM -0700, spike wrote:

> >...Another example is that the cost of delivering a single gram to LEO 
> isn't all that much lower than the cost of delivering 100 kg, if you 
> are needing specific orbit parameters...

>...You've got microsats and nanosats, down to cubesats which take a ride on
a sat bus.
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I need to clarify that.  If you don't have someone else's rocket to ride in,
where the someone else is paying most of the cost for their big payload, and
you must pay for the control systems and everything needed to place a
payload into a specific orbit with a specific angular momentum, the cost
stops scaling down after a certain point.  You have certain required
tolerances to compensate for uncertainties in engine performance, weather
conditions, all the real-world stuff.  That makes for a smallest practical
payload capability, and it is nowhere near one gram.

Of course if you can buy a 1 kg box on someone else's rocket and deploy 100
one-gram payloads out of it, that might be a good way to go.

spike