Total Members Voted: 113
Voting closed: 11/19/2021 08:17 pm
Is this supposed to be per-seat or for the whole capsule and its crew?
Respectfully, what's the point of this poll? Is the cost known and the closest guess wins a terrific prize, like in the landing bingo? Or is this a set of guesses but the actual cost will never be known unless someone at SpaceX totally violates their NDA? Or is there some other point?
Quote from: laszlo on 09/20/2021 09:59 pmRespectfully, what's the point of this poll? Is the cost known and the closest guess wins a terrific prize, like in the landing bingo? Or is this a set of guesses but the actual cost will never be known unless someone at SpaceX totally violates their NDA? Or is there some other point?Cost of the flight of a flight proven Falcon9 is pretty well established based on tweets from Elon and such. The costs for training astronauts, running the astronaut recovery operations, refurbishing a Dragon2, etc are not public and I haven't even seen much speculation about it.There's lots of talk about demand for space tourism. Getting a rough estimate on the cost for this kind of a flight will inform discussions that are occurring here and elsewhere. Sorry, no prize for you or any other respondent.
Training astronauts and running the recovery operations are hard for anyone to make an educated guess on - IMO anything from $25,000 - $100,000 per person would be reasonable, and could be higher - and while expensive if the average person is paying out-of-pocket, it is likely to be basically a rounding error in the context of the overall mission cost. My guess is the cost to SpaceX is probably $90-100 million. $40 million price per seat has been floated as a possible introductory figure, and I'm assuming that's for a 4-person crew (Inspiration 4 looked comfortable with 4 people but I wouldn't want to be in there with many more for any length of time). That gives SpaceX a healthy profit margin.
Don't forget about insurance.. whilst not cheap at the best of times, cover for an "amateur astronaut" will be five figures at least.
Quote from: CameronD on 09/20/2021 11:08 pmDon't forget about insurance.. whilst not cheap at the best of times, cover for an "amateur astronaut" will be five figures at least.I don't know if I would count that as a necessary cost. The value of life insurance for the very wealthy is questionable except as a tax planning instrument.
While we do not have numbers, we do have elements.Lets start with the assumption that the flight is on pre-flown equipment. Therefore the 'cost' of the flight would be composed of expenses related to:1) Refurbishment cost of booster stage 1b) Amortized cost of booster2) New build 2nd stage3) New build Dragon2 Trunk4) Refurbishment cost of Dragon2 capsule 4b) Amortized cost of Dragon25) Fuel/Oxydizer/crew consumables6) Launch and Flight service personnel (Pad Ninjas - Launch/Mission Control)7) Government launch/landing support services (NASA/Spaceforce/NOAA/FAA/FCC/Coast Guard/etc)8 ) Crew/Passenger training9) Custom space/flight suits10) Recovery service personnel and ship wear and tear (Also, where does the ASDS expense reside? Is it a negative on successful recovery like an auto-parts core refund?)11) Taxes and fees (Hey, it's on my phone bill!!!)*bold indicates areas I'm assuming to be highest expense*I'm gonna ballpark this in the $70 - $80 mln range
I'm not talking about life insurance.When it comes to rocket launch, there are multiple levels of insurance required by the FAA/AST (and others no doubt) to cover both the possibility of the rocket impacting people on earth somewhere/anywhere and the possibility of you screwing stuff up in flight. It's all part of being allowed to play with something that could destroy a small city - and if you're not covered, you don't go. Training reduces the cost somewhat, but doesn't eliminate it entirely.It's likely covered by SpaceX in this case and would vary depending upon whether or not you're a passenger (who's not allowed to do anything) or a pilot (someone who can), but because there are so few companies offering it and the risk is enormous, the premiums are eye-wateringly steep indeed!
Quote from: Cherokee43v6 on 09/21/2021 02:25 amWhile we do not have numbers, we do have elements.Lets start with the assumption that the flight is on pre-flown equipment. Therefore the 'cost' of the flight would be composed of expenses related to:1) Refurbishment cost of booster stage 1b) Amortized cost of booster2) New build 2nd stage3) New build Dragon2 Trunk4) Refurbishment cost of Dragon2 capsule 4b) Amortized cost of Dragon25) Fuel/Oxydizer/crew consumables6) Launch and Flight service personnel (Pad Ninjas - Launch/Mission Control)7) Government launch/landing support services (NASA/Spaceforce/NOAA/FAA/FCC/Coast Guard/etc)8 ) Crew/Passenger training9) Custom space/flight suits10) Recovery service personnel and ship wear and tear (Also, where does the ASDS expense reside? Is it a negative on successful recovery like an auto-parts core refund?)11) Taxes and fees (Hey, it's on my phone bill!!!)*bold indicates areas I'm assuming to be highest expense*I'm gonna ballpark this in the $70 - $80 mln rangeWill point out that personnel pay and recovery hardware operating cost will be fixed annual overhead cost regardless of how many missions that those personnel and hardware supported annually. So a relative low fraction of the total cost per crew Dragon flight on a Falcon 9.Also includes the negative cost of any milestone payments from either NASA or DoD on each crew Dragon launch. AIUI NASA pays for insight on non NASA crew Dragon missions.
I dont see how a manned capsule meaningfully changes the risk to outside parties.
I made a guess just to see what others are thinking.We really have no idea, do we?Numbers are all over the place.Were we supposed to learn something from this?