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About that SSTO a consortium of Japanese companies is proposing: They're talking about a 2-orbit flight for $20,000. This table is from one of their papers on the subject:
Number of vehicles produced 50
Price per vehicle $ 1 billion
Trips per year 300
Useful lifetime of spacecraft 10
Per vehicle, per trip:
Amortization cost $ 430,000
Fuel 160,000
Miscellaneous costs 200,000
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Total $ 790,000 per flight
Passengers per flight 50
Cost per passenger $ 15,800
Passengers per year 750,000
Gross revenues per year $ 12 billion
The money figures were translated from Yen to Dollars using a factor of 100 Yen to the dollar. Amortization cost is based on 5% per year cost of capital in Japan; which is reasonable in their market. These numbers assume a fleet of 50 vehicles, each making a 2-orbit trip (about 2 hours in orbit), 300 days a year. In other words, a typical small airline operation in terms of operations. Each vehicle would make 3,000 trips in its design lifetime; this is typical for big airplanes.
The titles at the end of the chart are a bit confusing. They're talking about a ticket price of $20,000, so let's look at it again with that in mind:
Price per passenger $ 20,000
Cost per passenger $ 15,800
Profit per passenger 4,200
Passengers per year 750,000
Gross revenues per year $ 15 billion
Total cost per year 12 billion
Net profit per year 3 billion
Give an initial investment of $50 billion and an income of $15 billion per year for 10 years, IRR = 27%. Not too shabby, if you happen to have $50 billion lying around.
According to Tom Rogers, the Japanese companies involved are:
Reference - P. Collins, T. Akiyama, I. Shraishi, and T. Nagase: "Services Expected for the First Phase of Space Tourism"; ISTS 94-g-25p.
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