Fig. 6. Histogram of the present space goods economy and gap sizes. It is surprising to realize that even at today's (not 1972's) energy prices (say 0.05 $ per kW), the minimum energy expense to escape Earth is slightly less than 1 $ per kilogram or about 50 $ per person. We know from everyday experience the airline and air freight companies have a large business transporting people and specialized goods long distances for the order of 5 $ per kg. The small fraction of goods with values greater than 5 $ per kg can support this business (approximately 3 to 4 B$ in 1972). The total value of high value goods is much larger now. Think of the price of new military aircraft, houses, gold or microcomputer chips. Figure 6 is simply an expansion of Fig. 5. Notice that $ per kg run from 0 to 2,000 rather than 0 to 18 as in Fig. 5. Now the 410 B$ value of the 230 SICs (for 1972) are compressed into a thin line at the left side. Follow the numbers in the balloons. The 1972 economy is #1. NASA's space shuttle is currently the state of the art for carrying matter to low Earth orbit (LEO). In effect it gives value added, or expense added, to the matter it uplifts. This value added in about 1,000 $/kg or #2 in Fig. 6. Note how far removed #2 is from the 1972 Economy (#1). For all practical purposes, only devices directly involved with the service economy (communication, weather, military, surveillance and scientific satellites) are valued highly enough by society and the economy to be worthy of production and launch. Even though 1,000 $/kg is much lower than for earlier rocket transport it is still sufficiently high that considerable expense is justified to make sure major payloads to space will be reliable and appropriate. This is especially true if the payloads are sent out of direct reach of the space shuttle. Installed payload and launch/operations costs of 0.1 B$ per mission occur. A program with 50 shuttle launches a year would have a cash flow of 5 B$ a year (order of magnitude) as indicated by #3. Notice that this is an almost trivial fraction of the materials economy of 1972 and even less in a late-1980s economy. Actual energy expenditures to reach space are an almost trivial cost fraction (#4) at 5
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