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To: decimon
"The government hasn't got that sort of money and we want this project to be a privately financed one," said Alan Bond, the managing director of REL.

That's the most encouraging thing in the article.

He's predicting around $450/lb. to LEO, I think SpaceX will probably have a rocket providing that price to orbit before this ever leaves the ground.

It turns out you don't need any whiz-bang technology to get to orbit cheaply, you just need a properly managed company that doesn't fall into the cost-plus development traps that make development costs skyrocket.

14 posted on 05/24/2011 4:29:55 PM PDT by Brett66 (Where government advances, and it advances relentlessly , freedom is imperiled -Janice Rogers Brown)
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To: Brett66
He's predicting around $450/lb. to LEO, I think SpaceX will probably have a rocket providing that price to orbit before this ever leaves the ground.

Where have we seen those sorts of predictions before...?

FWIW, the price of SpaceX rockets is rising, and we can expect it to increase more as they find out that the market for their product isn't nearly so robust as they'd assumed. Infrastructure is expensive, and you've gotta keep it around even if nobody's buying this month. (And forget about that "commercial" stuff: most of their money comes from NASA....)

40 posted on 05/24/2011 7:19:21 PM PDT by r9etb
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