On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote:
> > How well would disposable heat shields and parachutes work? Aim them at > > a shallow body of water for soft landings and pick them up with a ship. > > Or drop them onto hard ground if the contents are padded enough or not > > fragile. > > No way a disposable system can compete with this shuttle. The > shuttle costs $8 per pound of payload. $8 per pound for a new > shuttle, not per flight. > > The parachute would be $0.1 per pound. Say the parachute is a > quarter of the total cost, and the shuttle would have to last > a mere 20 flights to pay for itself ... Are there no per-trip costs for the shuttle? Sure, water and RTGs are cheap, but not *free*. There's service time, plus even if the water's free, someone's got to put it in the tanks, they probably want money for that. -- chuk _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
