james_davis_nicoll (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2007-07-14 02:42 pm
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2007-07-14 02:42 pm
Thinking out loud: cheap space flight
The price elasticity of demand for space flight is fairly low, about 0.6. This means, for example, that if the price drops by a factor of four, the demand only goes up by about 2.4. From the point of view of the guys selling rocket services, cheap rockets might be a disaster since total revenues drop if prices go down.
This is the same kind of problem farmers face: it's possible to produce a lot more food less expensively than a century ago but past a certain point, people don't react to cheaper food prices by buying more of it in proportion to the drop in price. The effect on the farmer is that economic survival requires large enterprises. That is, Archer Daniels Midland becomes a viable model and the small family farm stops being one.
This is the same kind of problem farmers face: it's possible to produce a lot more food less expensively than a century ago but past a certain point, people don't react to cheaper food prices by buying more of it in proportion to the drop in price. The effect on the farmer is that economic survival requires large enterprises. That is, Archer Daniels Midland becomes a viable model and the small family farm stops being one.
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But it seems like this particular curve would be nigh-impossible to extrapolate from current conditions, if for no other reason than there are currently external limitations which drastically affect the inputs which aren't directly related to the cost of the service. Not only is the curve not linear, I don't know that its higher-order properties can realistically be estimated very far from known values.
For instance, if I wished up an induction launcher out on the desert plains tomorrow, the FAA would STILL tie me in knots for years, limiting my launching ability, running up gazillions in legal bills, etc, etc.
I do agree, however, that the end of the curve that's in the black for anything eminently practical (say, REAL space tourism or long-term habitat) is currently on the far shore of a metaphorical Red Sea. Which makes me sad, because I do not wish to die down here in the smog and the crowds. What we *really* need is really, really cheap power to run lasers to launch external-combustion launch vehicles.
*ducking*
That *would* be a novel thing to run past the FAA, though. "It doesn't HAVE an engine. It just goes up when I flip this here switch. It's magic."
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