0191 -9067/82/010073-22$03.00/0 Copyright ® 1982 SUNSAT Energy Council THE ECONOMICS OF BOOTSTRAPPING SPACE INDUSTRIES — DEVELOPMENT OF AN ANALYTIC COMPUTER MODEL AARON H. GOLDBERG+ Lunar & Planetary Institute 3303 NASA Road 1 Houston, Texas 77058, USA DAVID R. CRISWELL* California Space Institute University of California at San Diego Mail Code A-030 La Jolla, California 92093, USA Abstract — A simple economic model of “bootstrapping” industrial growth in space and on the Moon is presented. An initial space manufacturing facility (SMF) is assumed to consume lunar materials to enlarge the productive capacity in space. After reaching a predetermined throughput, the enlarged SMF is devoted to products which generate revenue continuously in proportion to the accumulated output mass (such as space solar power stations). Present discounted value and physical estimates for the general factors of production (transport, capital efficiency, labor, etc.) are combined to explore optimum growth in terms of maximized discounted revenues. It is found that “bootstrapping" reduces the fractional cost to a space industry of transport off-Earth, permits more efficient use of a given transport fleet. It is concluded that more attention should be given to structuring “bootstrapping” scenarios in which “learning while doing” can be more fully incorporated in program analysis. INTRODUCTION Three basic strategies for space industrialization have been proposed. The terrestrial approach involves the exclusive use of Earth launched materials and equipment for the fabrication of useful products in space. A major detraction of the scheme is the cost of transporting material into space inside rockets. Shuttle payloads (1) will initially (1980's) be delivered into orbit for roughly $1 million/ton. This figure dwarfs the procurement costs of nearly all large scale cargos. Multibillion dollar development expenses will be required to provide large lift vehicles which can reduce this cost by factors of 10 to 30 (2). There is strong incentive to employ rockets to ship only small masses of high value products into space. Recent work on electromagnetic accelerators may make it possible to eject or augment the ejection of ton sized payloads of inert materials directly from Earth to space. Costs of the order of a few times the energy costs or approximately tens of dollars per kilogram might be achievable. However, the materials would have to withstand thousands of gravities of acceleration (3,4) and would require subsequent processing in space. *To whom correspondence should be addressed. +Present address: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.
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