[gurps] [VEHICLE] of the week 759 - OHI Automated Heavy Lift Shuttle

[David Scheidt]

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 12:10 PM, Zan Lynx <zlynx at acm.org> wrote:
> Onno Meyer wrote:
>
>> There are also per-trip costs for the drop pods (retrieval, for one). I
>> can't give you the exact figure, which probably depends on local conditions,
>> but the order-of-magnitude should give an indication that disposables are
>> not cost-efficient. Say the water for the shuttle is as expensive as the tug
>> for the pod, and the maintenance for each flight is 2.5% of sticker price,
>> and the shuttle pays for itself after 40 flights, not 20. Both
>> trivial numbers for a technology that is as mature as jet airliners are
>> today.
>
> All right, so drop pods are a bad idea.
> But don't forget to account for the runway repair costs over time as well.

Runway is just concrete.  Concrete is expensive in the modern world,
because it's got a huge amount of embodied energy.  (Cement, the major
cost component in concrete, is basically dehydrated limestone.  It
takes something on the order of 5 GJ per tonne to make.)  But at TL10,
energy is cheap.  Really, really, really cheap.  Probably not quite
"too cheap to meter", but pretty close.


-- 
David Scheidt
dmscheidt at gmail.com