How much will a personal spacecraft cost?

OT: anything goes!

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Uraniun235
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Post by Uraniun235 »

It really depends on the technology base. In one civilization, it may be easy and affordable to purchase an FTL-capable craft. In another, they may be prohibitively expensive, available only to governments, corporations, and very wealthy individuals.
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The Third Man
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Post by The Third Man »

We could come up with some sort of price based on what you've told us. Your bootle of coke and house data means that you're proposing an economy which - space-travel aside - is equivalent to that of today. This means people would have the same sort of disposable incomes as they do today. Since you are proposing a privately-owned spacecraft, produced by a company operating under economic conditions that are equivalent to those of today, we can see that the company would have to offer their product at a price such that there are people who can actually afford to purchase it - if this wasn't so then the company wouldn't have a viable business plan, and there would be no such spacecraft in existence. There exist people today who can spend on cars costing say, $10,000 - $1,000,000, and a smaller number who can spend on luxury sea-going yachts up to, say, $10 million - so that's the sort of market our hypothetical spacecraft manufacturer would have to target their product at to be viable. That would be a good range for the purchase price of your spacecraft.
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Broomstick
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Post by Broomstick »

Shinova wrote:But anyway, let's see: said spaceship is between 50 to 100 meters, can lift off from the ground and go into space in under a minute, and land as well.
That rate of acceleration would require a propulsion system more powerful than what we currently use. The g forces involved would also be considerable - do you intend to have people aboard? Do you intend them to retain conciousness while traveling into space? Because, absent some weird, completely unknown technology the accerlation required to loft a vessel into space (as currently defined) in "under a minute" would surely knock you unconcious, if not kill you. (The aorta has an irritating habit of disassociating itself from the heart at around 20 g's. A very few have survived momentary acceleration in ecess of 20 g's, but it's definitely a fluke thing)
Is capable of FTL that can take it from one end of the galaxy to the other in a few months.
FTL travel may not even be possible, so it is impossible to take this factor into account in any meaningful way.
Spaceship has shielding, and can travel without engine fuel for about a couple of months too.
Hey, traveling without fuel is no big deal - in space, Newtonian tendencies to continue traveling in a straight line apply. You'll just keep going and going and going....

To land, the only fuel required is that needed to orient yourself properly to the body you intend to land on, and to deaccelerate enough to let gravity take over. Our current space shuttle glides from orbit to ground using just that technique (when it flies at all).
What else: given that it's a personal yacht, it has the appropriate living quarters, kitchen, lounge, maybe even a gym or a hot tub.
No biggie - assuming a strong enough propulsion system, it a matter of what you want to bring with you.
Materials are simple advanced steel alloy, power and information is distributed via super-conducting wires (something like Star Wars').
Kid, we ain't building spaceships right now out of "steel" - we're using things like carbon composites, aluminum, titanium, and ceramics. And are super-conducting wires truly necessary? If copper or aluminum is easier to make, repair, and maintain we'll continue using that unless there's an overwhelming need for superconduction, which would require more machinery to keep cool enough to work, or be made of much less common materials.
Power generation is multiple fusion reactors with a sixty percent efficiency rate, can power the ship for years without refueling.
We ain't go fusion reactors, so it's hard to estimate power output or refueling needs, isn't it?

As for ownership costs - are you talking about sole proprietorships, or the arrangement frequently used for high-end airplanes called "fractional ownership"?

Insurance? The insurance for my airplane activities is a mere 60% of yearly auto insurance (and I have perfect records in both areas - knock, knock, knock)
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