Chuck;
Recall that BO ran an auction for seats on their first flight (with more
than 20k bids). That means that they *know* the price-elasticity of demand
for their product in the current market; it further means that they are
able to skim the demand curve: flying those willing to pay the most first
and those with a lower price point later.
Typically, the price / demand relationship is pretty steep at the very top
of the curve and we might thus expect price to drop significantly after the
first few dozen flights.
However, we also need to note that there are thousands of billionaires and
tens of thousands of centimillionairs; at present flight rates it could be
many years before they exhaust demand from those willing and able to pay
$500k.
Bill.
On Fri, Apr 1, 2022 at 2:16 PM crogers168 <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
<< Maybe the cost will come down after the initial market is exhausted.
How many people have that much readily available disposal income? Most
people I know don't. >>
I remember many years ago Lockheed-Martin did a study of the potential
market for personal spaceflight. I heard that the results were that there
was definitely a $1B to $2B market, but the problem was that while the
initial market was $1B to $2B, after all the Billionaires and others worth
in the $100M-$200M range who had grown up in the 1960's during the space
race had flown into space once, where was the sustaining market after
that? It was a big chunk of an untapped market waiting in the wings for
personal spaceflight to happen, but after you worked through all of those
people, where was the sustaining market? Lockheed-Martin decided to pass
on the market (if they were ever even serious).
I also thought it was telling that there was an actual market for those
going to Antarctica or climbing Mount Everest which was in the $100K range,
and in terms of climbing Mount Everest definitely dangerous. These two
markets are maybe 100-200 people per year? So I thought there would be a
market.
It's pretty neat, as I've traveled through my aerospace engineering career
waiting for things (where's my flying car?), this one definitely happened.
It took a while, but you can realistically pay (if you have the money) to
fly nearly into space (Karman Line), fly all the way into space (above the
Karman Line), and even fly all the way into orbit. After many years,
personal spaceflight finally happened.
Charles E. (Chuck) Rogers
-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Wills <willsrw@xxxxxxxxx>
To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thu, Mar 31, 2022 12:25 pm
Subject: [AR] Re: George Neild in Space
Yea, I saw his name on the passenger roster. Must be nice. What did that
cost him, $400k.
Heck, I'm jealous.
Maybe the cost will come down after the initial market is exhausted. How
many people have that much readily available disposal income? Most people
I know don't.
Take Care,
Rick Wills
Huber Heights, Ohio
On Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 2:58 PM Michael Kelly <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Don't know if everyone saw this, but George Nield (former Associate
Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation, FAA) just flew on a New
Shepard flight with five others. Woo hoo!!
