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Comparative economics of space resource utilizationPhysical economic factors such as mass payback ratio, total payback ratio, and capital payback time are discussed and used to compare the economics of using resources from the Moon, Mars and its moons, and near Earth asteroids to serve certain near term markets such as propellant in low Earth orbit or launched mass reduction for lunar and Martian exploration. Methods for accounting for the time cost of money in simple figures of merit such as MPRs are explored and applied to comparisons such as those between lunar, Martian, and asteroidal resources. Methods for trading off capital and operating costs to compare schemes with substantially different capital to operating cost ratio are presented and discussed. Areas where further research or engineering would be extremely useful in reducing economic uncertainty are identified, as are areas where economic merit is highly sensitive to engineering performance - as well as areas where such sensitivity is surprisingly low.
Document ID
19910016774
Acquisition Source
Legacy CDMS
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Cutler, Andrew Hall
(Arizona Univ. Tucson, AZ, United States)
Date Acquired
September 6, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 1991
Publication Information
Publication: Resources of Near-Earth Space: Abstracts
Subject Category
Astronautics (General)
Accession Number
91N26088
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.

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