Individual Beats Governments in Building a Launch Vehicle
Department:
Privatizing Spaceflight
Teaser:
"The achievement of Elon Musk's SpaceX launching Falcon 9 outshines recent efforts by Korea, India, and the United States. Sam Dinkin analyses the implications of this transition."
Source:
The Space Review Download time: Jun 21 2010 10:27 AM ET
Private development of computers has revolutionized the world economy. In 1946, the first electronic computer, ENIAC was built for $6 million [all amounts in inflation adjusted 2010 dollars] paid for by the United States Army. In 1976, the first Apple I was built for $5,000 (plus sweat equity) primarily as a curiosity to impress fellow hobbyists. The Apple II went on to democratize computing.
The Redstone rocket (which was renamed Juno to launch the Explorer in response to Sputnik) was developed by General Electric and the Army starting in 1944. It was first launched in 1953 at a development cost of $700 million. From 2002 to 2010 SpaceX developed its Falcon 1 and 9 with $130 million in investment, primarily from Elon Musk. Is it possible that orbital rocketry is about to blossom?
The hard cost of development of rockets has not fallen by a factor of 1,000 like the cost of computer development has. However, the number of entities that have sufficient net worth to pay for development has grown dramatically in a half century. In 2009, there were 78,000 people in the world with investible assets of $30 million or more. Assuming the same wealth distribution, there were about 120 people with $360 million or more in 1944.…
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