David Scheidt wrote:
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.
Even in the current modern world, manpower is usually the biggest cost.
So it isn't the concrete you have to worry about, it is the
union-mandated six person minimum team to supervise the concrete repair
bots. :D
--
Zan Lynx
[email protected]
"Knowledge is Power. Power Corrupts. Study Hard. Be Evil."
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