Re:Hubble telescope has new lease on life after computer swa...
by giantrobot on Saturday July 17, 2021 @02:21AM
(#27863902)
Commercial space launches existed before SpaceX. There's even been relatively inexpensive launch vehicles. Despite this you don't see commercial space telescopes. You don't really even see commercial ground based telescopes.
The reason is pretty simple, there's no money to be made. Your potential customers are researchers scraping together grant money. There's no way to make enough to cover the CapEx and OpEx of a space telescope let alone make a profit.
There's no magic SpaceX fairy dust you can sprinkle on a project to change that calculus. The launch cost is a small portion of the total CapEx of a space based instrument.
The reason is pretty simple, there's no money to be made. Your potential customers are researchers scraping together grant money. There's no way to make enough to cover the CapEx and OpEx of a space telescope let alone make a profit.
There's no magic SpaceX fairy dust you can sprinkle on a project to change that calculus. The launch cost is a small portion of the total CapEx of a space based instrument.