SSTOs will have a tremendous impact on space exploration by slashing costs by two orders of magnitude. The Shuttle costs $12,000/pound to put cargo into orbit. Expendable rockets such as the Delta, Atlas and Ariane cost $3,000 to $4,000/pound. McDonnell Douglas estimates its SSTO could sell service for under $500/pound at first, and as low as $50/pound in later models.
Putting a person into orbit will cost only $10,000 to $100,000 with an SSTO, compared to $2.4 million for the Shuttle, if it were carrying passengers in the cargo bay. (Russia has charged $10 million to $14 million to put a person into space, but that also includes a three-day stay aboard the MIR space station.)
At $10,000 to $100,000, space travel becomes affordable for a few thousand affluent tourists and several hundred companies that would want to put their researchers into microgravity laboratories. Tourists and researchers would fill several dozen orbital habitats and provide a sizable market for companies making life support equipment, space suits and in-orbit services.
Creating an orbital industry
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The emergence of a modest in-orbit marketplace for hardware and services will contribute to the affordability of a return to the Moon. No longer will government space agencies be buying space equipment in lots of two or three or ten. Companies will be making space equipment in lots of several dozen, and competing among each other for customers. Prices for space suits, water recycling systems and all the other parts needed for lunar exploration will shrink to a tiny fraction of the Apollo-era price tag. This means that in addition to reducing launch costs, SSTOs will reduce the cost of space hardware in general by creating the first mass market for such equipment.
