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> Even if I'm being generous and grant them two private crewed missions per year, that's not exactly a multi-billion dollar business. Didn't each shuttle cost

> Even if I'm being generous and grant them two private crewed missions per year, that's not exactly a multi-billion dollar business. Didn't each shuttle cost several billion dollars to refurnish in between launches? There will certainly be a market for this if SpaceX is capable of meeting the demand, especially in the near future as the ISS ages and the international community begins to build and man the next generation of space stations.

qayxc 5y ago
> Didn't each shuttle cost several billion dollars to refurnish in between launches? No. The launch costs of the Space Shuttle include infrastructure and development cost. Original cost projections were based on up to 50 launches per year. With an actual launch cadence of just ~3 launches per year, accumulated costs skyrocketed when distributed over all launches. Another factor was the heat shielding, which didn't meet the requirements for fast inspection and maintenance due to its flawed design - a flaw that was addressed by Soviet Buran by the way. It remains to be seen whether SpaceX manages to get around this problem in their latest design. > There will certainly be a market for this [...] and the international community begins to build and man the next generation of space stations. Plural even? That's a bold assumption. Every commercial venture relies on incentives. There's currently only very little incentive to build crewed space stations. There are basically only three major applications that ware known to benefit from micro-g environments: optronics manufacturing, growing natural organs, and tourism. The first two have the same problem in that it only works out if mass production can be achieved. Otherwise getting raw materials to- and finished products back down from orbit is way too expensive for it to be economically feasible. Tourism cannot be a mass market either. It's not just the price that makes it a very exclusive niche market, but also the medical requirements. William Shatner for example might be able to survive a suborbital hop with Bezos' space dildo, but wouldn't pass the medical exam for a full blown orbital flight, no matter how much money he'd pay. Another factor for the tourism industry is maintenance and staffing. Even with 3 month crew rotations, the costs for just staffing a space station would be quite substantial. For reference, the crew-to-passenger ratio of luxury cruise ships is between 1.3 and ~4 [0]. Tourist space stations would be in that category, too for various reasons so I'd expect similar ratios there. [0] https://www.aboutluxurycruising.com/understanding-crew-to-passenger-ratio/ https://www.aboutluxurycruising.com/understanding-crew-to-pa...
- DennisP 5y ago
  Hemodialysis costs Medicare $90,000 annually per patient.[1] Space kidneys could cost $500K and the government would probably still save money, especially if they're based on the patient's stem cells (or very close matches) so immunosuppressants aren't necessary. Kidneys don't mass much. We don't need super-cheap launch to make space kidneys worthwhile. [1] https://pharm.ucsf.edu/kidney/need/statistics https://pharm.ucsf.edu/kidney/need/statistics
  - qayxc 5y ago
    > We don't need super-cheap launch to make space kidneys worthwhile. It'd still be a giant gamble, because both progress in artificial kidneys and new methods for 3d-printing organs could make dialysis obsolete faster than space-grown organs could be available.
  - nexuist 5y ago
    Is this something we could start doing tomorrow? Do we already know how to make space kidneys and just need the space in space to do it?
    - DennisP 5y ago
      3D organ printing appears to be advancing rapidly and zero-g is thought to make things significantly easier but no, I don't think we're there yet. I was just responding to the previous comment, which claimed it would only be economic in mass production due to launch costs. I think that's incorrect due to the massive expenses incurred by dialysis patients. The cost of a kidney can be quite high and still save money compared to dialysis. I used the cost of dialysis but it's not even just the dialysis itself, it's also dealing with the complications that come with it.

qayxc 5y ago

> Didn't each shuttle cost several billion dollars to refurnish in between launches? No. The launch costs of the Space Shuttle include infrastructure and development cost. Original cost projections were based on up to 50 launches per year. With an actual launch cadence of just ~3 launches per year, accumulated costs skyrocketed when distributed over all launches. Another factor was the heat shielding, which didn't meet the requirements for fast inspection and maintenance due to its flawed design - a flaw that was addressed by Soviet Buran by the way. It remains to be seen whether SpaceX manages to get around this problem in their latest design. > There will certainly be a market for this [...] and the international community begins to build and man the next generation of space stations. Plural even? That's a bold assumption. Every commercial venture relies on incentives. There's currently only very little incentive to build crewed space stations. There are basically only three major applications that ware known to benefit from micro-g environments: optronics manufacturing, growing natural organs, and tourism. The first two have the same problem in that it only works out if mass production can be achieved. Otherwise getting raw materials to- and finished products back down from orbit is way too expensive for it to be economically feasible. Tourism cannot be a mass market either. It's not just the price that makes it a very exclusive niche market, but also the medical requirements. William Shatner for example might be able to survive a suborbital hop with Bezos' space dildo, but wouldn't pass the medical exam for a full blown orbital flight, no matter how much money he'd pay. Another factor for the tourism industry is maintenance and staffing. Even with 3 month crew rotations, the costs for just staffing a space station would be quite substantial. For reference, the crew-to-passenger ratio of luxury cruise ships is between 1.3 and ~4 [0]. Tourist space stations would be in that category, too for various reasons so I'd expect similar ratios there. [0] https://www.aboutluxurycruising.com/understanding-crew-to-passenger-ratio/ https://www.aboutluxurycruising.com/understanding-crew-to-pa...

DennisP 5y ago
Hemodialysis costs Medicare $90,000 annually per patient.[1] Space kidneys could cost $500K and the government would probably still save money, especially if they're based on the patient's stem cells (or very close matches) so immunosuppressants aren't necessary. Kidneys don't mass much. We don't need super-cheap launch to make space kidneys worthwhile. [1] https://pharm.ucsf.edu/kidney/need/statistics https://pharm.ucsf.edu/kidney/need/statistics
- qayxc 5y ago
  > We don't need super-cheap launch to make space kidneys worthwhile. It'd still be a giant gamble, because both progress in artificial kidneys and new methods for 3d-printing organs could make dialysis obsolete faster than space-grown organs could be available.
- nexuist 5y ago
  Is this something we could start doing tomorrow? Do we already know how to make space kidneys and just need the space in space to do it?
  - DennisP 5y ago
    3D organ printing appears to be advancing rapidly and zero-g is thought to make things significantly easier but no, I don't think we're there yet. I was just responding to the previous comment, which claimed it would only be economic in mass production due to launch costs. I think that's incorrect due to the massive expenses incurred by dialysis patients. The cost of a kidney can be quite high and still save money compared to dialysis. I used the cost of dialysis but it's not even just the dialysis itself, it's also dealing with the complications that come with it.