3 ms·
Is the $1000/ton a law a physics, or could that ever possibly scale up and come down an order of magnitude?
by zaroth 2y ago
Is the $1000/ton a law a physics, or could that ever possibly scale up and come down an order of magnitude?
- pfdietz 2y agoThere are no dollars in the laws of physics. It's connected ultimately to productivity of all the activities involved, and there's no obvious upper bound to productivity.
- WalterBright 2y agoThere's the rocket equation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation
- pfdietz 2y agoWhich doesn't have dollars anywhere in it.
- WalterBright 2y agoThe point of the rocket equation is there are hard physical limits on what rockets can do, and dollars won't change it.
- pfdietz 2y agoThat's nice. It doesn't imply a lower bound for costs, just of ratios of costs.
- jillesvangurp 2y agoJust the current market price for fossil methane, which of course goes up and down. But I'm assuming SpaceX gets their methane on the open market. It's quite possible that SpaceX has access to some cheaper methane source. Texas produces a lot of it. And SpaceX has speculated about eventually switching to some renewable source by e.g. synthesizing methane. In which case that would boil down to cost of electricity and carbon. I don't see that becoming cheaper short term but that could happen long term.