Fig. 7. PDV of entire project excluding costs of R&D and establishing the SMF (billions of dollars). Inclusion of R&D costs changes only the absolute magnitudes, and not the relative positions, of the curves. transport rates, there would be a slight bias in favor of large M. (Even though development costs for such a system would be greater, the incremental costs would not be incurred unless some savings could be realized.) Since RND costs are assumed constant over the entire plane, they change only the absolute magnitudes, and not the relative positions, of the contours in Fig. 6. CONCLUSIONS Although there is great uncertainty in the input parameters for the graphs above, the general behavior of the curves remains the same over a wide range of values. The optimal combination of Ko and M always lies close to a line through the origin with slope </>. Since </> is dominated by the productivity, the peak PDV must be quite sensitive to p. Just where along the line one should operate is determined by three considerations. First is the importance of time as indicated by the discount rate and the revenues. Second is the extent to which </> enables the utilization of lunar resources to shorten the period prior to steady-state operation. Finally, the optimum is influenced by the cost of the transport fleet. The costs during capital development, in contrast, play only a minor role in determining the optimal production path. They introduce only a slight bias toward the origin. Indeed, Fig. 6 can be approximated quite closely by ignoring these costs altogether (Fig. 7). As transport costs decrease with more advanced launch systems, the difference becomes negligible.
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