Cost in Space

The impossible happens all the time – Will Robinson, Lost In Space 2018 TV series

Want to be an astronaut? If you’d like to do that for NASA, it’s nearly impossible. Need to swing the odds in your favor? Now you can.

Hypernomics says, if you can’t beat the game, change it.

Several firms are doing just that right now. Virgin Galactic (A) has booked 600 people to take 2 to 3-hour rides that will, for a few minutes, surpass the Karman Line, 100 km above sea level, which defines the boundary of Space. That goes for $250K/person.

Perhaps you’d like to go higher and longer. For about $28M/person, you can book a ride up to the ISS for a week or so with Space Adventures (B), return flight included. The same company has secured two unnamed travelers to a lunar orbit mission (C) for $167M. As D reveals, these missions lie on the same Demand line.

E reveals the Apollo 10 lunar orbit was costly, about $1B/seat in today’s dollars. As the industry got smarter, costs fell. Note in E that 3 seats in the Soyuz capsule fell on virtually the same Demand line as that for commercial Space in D, as will the 6 places aboard the Space Dragon from SpaceX (E’s slope is almost unchanged from D, the intercept went up by 3.3%).

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