A lot depends on there being 6 paying customers per flight at $26M a ticket.Also, the "10 million per trip" line item for support/food, etc is waaaaaaaay low.Basically, your revenues are optimistically high, and your ongoing expenses are optimistically low.
If you assume your space hotel gets visitors once a quarter, that means you probably need a minimum of 4 crewed vehicle flights, plus 2-3 logistics flights per year. Of course, you could put crew and cargo on the same launch, but that dramatically reduces the number of passengers.
At $30M for pure tourism the number of tourists a year would be fortunate to have as many as 2 a year. (This is supported by past history of tourists to orbit.)
About logistics and cargo. There is a possible solution that would not need separate logistics flights. Falcon 9 has enough payload capacity that a separate cargo module could be placed into the trunk, maybe an extended trunk. There would be some development cost but as this is a passive module it should not be too expensive. This way there could be a good supply of food and consumables.
That would require an airlock and EVA's to retrieve them. Or some sort of small cargo airlock with a robotic arm to place the supplies there... Any options adds a lot of complexity and cost.Also Dragon might still be delta-v limited and might not be able to lift 7 people and a couple of tonnes of cargo.
Could one consider the possibility of launch costs being reduced significantly by the time Bigelow's habitats are up and running?
Quote from: guckyfan on 11/20/2013 08:21 pmAbout logistics and cargo. There is a possible solution that would not need separate logistics flights. Falcon 9 has enough payload capacity that a separate cargo module could be placed into the trunk, maybe an extended trunk. There would be some development cost but as this is a passive module it should not be too expensive. This way there could be a good supply of food and consumables.That would require an airlock and EVA's to retrieve them. Or some sort of small cargo airlock with a robotic arm to place the supplies there... Any options adds a lot of complexity and cost.Also Dragon might still be delta-v limited and might not be able to lift 7 people and a couple of tonnes of cargo.
NASA ISS Operation and Management expenditures in 2013: $1493m (doesn't include research and transportation, another 1.5bn).We ignore the russians/japs/euros and their billions of contributions. Lets say it accounts for inefficiency or supplies that aren't needed for a simple hotel. 6 people to the station every 2 weeks + 5 cargo flights for $100m/launch (31 launches a year). (1493+31*100)/(26*6) = ~30m per seat.Doesn't include building the station.Will you find 156 tourists a year for that price?
^I ignored supplies by HTV/Progress. I ignored international contribution to operation. I ignored the cost of actually building a station. I ignored the fact that you probably need additional people up there to maintain/operate the station instead of tourists. And yet you still feel its necessary to bring up the "private can do everything NASA does at a fraction of the cost" "argument". You think people at NASA are not motivated enough to spend their budget on other things than ISS operation?