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Why not just send the weawer fitted to a dragon for a few dozen orbits and then land the produce? With block 5 they can make the trip for 50 million. Unless the

Why not just send the weawer fitted to a dragon for a few dozen orbits and then land the produce? With block 5 they can make the trip for 50 million. Unless the machines are too big it won't get any cheaper. Little logistics needed.

RhodesianHunter 8y ago
Wouldn't you then need to ship up all of the machinery every time, as opposed to shipping it up once and only shipping raw materials thereafter?
- skriticos2 8y ago
  Yes, but you'd simplify logistics. Maintaining a space station is magnitudes more expensive. Construction, complexity, upkeep, loading logistics. If the machines fit, you almost always come out ahead cost-wise.
  - solarkraft 8y ago
    Why? Stabilisation, maneuvering, possibly shielding come to mind. Are those that significant? Do you have a source/ good explanation for this?
    - skriticos2 8y ago
      With a capsule you load the machine and feedstock comfortably on the ground, shoot it up and press the start button. Wait for it to complete, deorbit, unload. With Dragon you have about 6 tons of weight to work with, so even if the aperture is 1-2 tons, you still can process 4-5 tons of material. Fairly reasonable and achievable with the right design. With an orbital station: first you need to build a station and keep it where it is (there are not a ton of orbital stations for a reason, they are expensive). If it has humans on it, everything becomes massively expensive. If not, well, you need future tech for onboard logistics and maintenance. Even if you ignore the ridiculous cost of building and maintaining an orbital station, life support and other crew issues.. You still need to rendezvous, dock, transfer feedstock, produce, transfer product back to capsule, land. Even just a station that works like a printer with the feedstock seamlessly plugging in it would make everything more complicated and expensive. Not even talking about how to fix your automated orbital platform when it breaks down. Now in a few hundred years when we have massive orbital platforms with readily available workforce for hire and workshops for rent.. maybe then. But with today's technology you are looking at cost differences between maybe a 100 million all in with a single shot automated capsule (+ your stuff) vs. several billions for the most simple station designs + a ton of risk and technical hurdles. Space is hard as we are fairly new to it (relatively speaking). It's all custom built as of now. Each moving peace you add increases cost exponentially. Adding humans just puts you on an entirely different chart altogether.

RhodesianHunter 8y ago

Wouldn't you then need to ship up all of the machinery every time, as opposed to shipping it up once and only shipping raw materials thereafter?

skriticos2 8y ago
Yes, but you'd simplify logistics. Maintaining a space station is magnitudes more expensive. Construction, complexity, upkeep, loading logistics. If the machines fit, you almost always come out ahead cost-wise.
- solarkraft 8y ago
  Why? Stabilisation, maneuvering, possibly shielding come to mind. Are those that significant? Do you have a source/ good explanation for this?
  - skriticos2 8y ago
    With a capsule you load the machine and feedstock comfortably on the ground, shoot it up and press the start button. Wait for it to complete, deorbit, unload. With Dragon you have about 6 tons of weight to work with, so even if the aperture is 1-2 tons, you still can process 4-5 tons of material. Fairly reasonable and achievable with the right design. With an orbital station: first you need to build a station and keep it where it is (there are not a ton of orbital stations for a reason, they are expensive). If it has humans on it, everything becomes massively expensive. If not, well, you need future tech for onboard logistics and maintenance. Even if you ignore the ridiculous cost of building and maintaining an orbital station, life support and other crew issues.. You still need to rendezvous, dock, transfer feedstock, produce, transfer product back to capsule, land. Even just a station that works like a printer with the feedstock seamlessly plugging in it would make everything more complicated and expensive. Not even talking about how to fix your automated orbital platform when it breaks down. Now in a few hundred years when we have massive orbital platforms with readily available workforce for hire and workshops for rent.. maybe then. But with today's technology you are looking at cost differences between maybe a 100 million all in with a single shot automated capsule (+ your stuff) vs. several billions for the most simple station designs + a ton of risk and technical hurdles. Space is hard as we are fairly new to it (relatively speaking). It's all custom built as of now. Each moving peace you add increases cost exponentially. Adding humans just puts you on an entirely different chart altogether.