On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 12:10 PM, Zan Lynx <[email protected]> wrote: > Onno Meyer wrote: > >> There are also per-trip costs for the drop pods (retrieval, for one). I >> can't give you the exact figure, which probably depends on local conditions, >> but the order-of-magnitude should give an indication that disposables are >> not cost-efficient. Say the water for the shuttle is as expensive as the tug >> for the pod, and the maintenance for each flight is 2.5% of sticker price, >> and the shuttle pays for itself after 40 flights, not 20. Both >> trivial numbers for a technology that is as mature as jet airliners are >> today. > > All right, so drop pods are a bad idea. > But don't forget to account for the runway repair costs over time as well.
Runway is just concrete. Concrete is expensive in the modern world, because it's got a huge amount of embodied energy. (Cement, the major cost component in concrete, is basically dehydrated limestone. It takes something on the order of 5 GJ per tonne to make.) But at TL10, energy is cheap. Really, really, really cheap. Probably not quite "too cheap to meter", but pretty close. -- David Scheidt [email protected] _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
