New private ‘Arc’ spacecraft aims to deliver cargo from orbit to anywhere on Earth in less than an hour (video)
https://www.space.com/technology/new-private-arc-spacecraft-aims-to-deliver-cargo-from-orbit-to-anywhere-on-earth-in-less-than-an-hour-video
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Submission statement (from article):
>A new private spacecraft aims to help the U.S. military get key supplies where they’re needed, and fast.
>On Wednesday (Oct. 1), the California-based company Inversion unveiled Arc, a vehicle designed to serve as an orbital storehouse and superfast delivery system for mission-critical gear, getting it anywhere on Earth in less than an hour.
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I’m sure the only customers who’ll be able to justify the cost will be the military.
LOL. I see two problems here:
1. Demand side. Who would be willing to pay such a high price for equipment to be delivered in one hour, anywhere on Earth, that can’t be delivered in a few hours at a much much smaller cost? It is hard to imagine what kind of cargo can’t be obtained fast from somewhere nearby, and that would justify such costs. Some people mentioned the military. Maybe, usually militaries would plan ahead instead of relying on something like this…
2. Supply side: If you have a loaded rocket ready to go, you could technically reach anywhere on earth in 60 to 90 minutes. But the real problem comes when you have to maintain a fueled and ready to go rocket 24/7 in the off chance someone needs it, and have the cargo on hand. Because otherwise, fueling a rocket, and getting that mission critical cargo to the rocket takes time.
So they have to keep an expensive rocket fueled and ready to go 24/7 (something we can’t easily do and don’t do because fuels and such are expensive to keep like that) and have a storage of possible mission critical cargo ready to go.
If this cargo is so rare and precious, what are the chances it is cheap to store and available to be kept at the launch site? If you need to bring it there beforehand, just in case, why not simply take it with you where you’d need it, just in case, at a fraction of the price.
What kind of cargo would be so important to require one hour delivery on the other side of the planet? Furthermore, the cargo would have to be so critical, as to avoid enemy detection or interception. Which country or theater of war would meet such requirements? Also consider the cost of launching such a rocket at the last minute….probably into the tens of millions of dollars, they might even need a backup rocket in case the first one failed. The costs are now astronomical.
at what velocity?
rods from god kind of velocity?
because we can’t get are cheap plastic crap from amazon fast ENOUGH?
This is actually smart. Billionaires and the military could be the target market. Imagine orbital dropping your golddigger wive/husband a Picknick into the Swiss alps.
The greenhouse gas emissions of this idea would cook our planet in no time.
“We see a future where thousands of Arc spacecraft form a logistics network that provides…”
Just how much space junk do we want to fill our skies with?? Already Elon is launching satellites at a rate that’s got terrestrial astronomers worried about the night sky.
Is there no international regulation on how many things can end up in orbit?
Forget the military. What would be truly great would be (and bear with me here it’s just fantasy) is if a global organisation like the UN had this facility to bring natural disaster relief to areas that suffer earthquakes, landslides, flooding etc.
A huge logistical warehousing operation that could spring into action at a few hours notice and get the stuff needed there in an hour. That would be of great use to the world. A bit like International Rescue.
Not sure how you get the stuff off the rocket and onto the ground though.
Anyhow, never going to happen. Just fantasy like the whole article.
That sounds extremely expensive and only really applicable to a very small target market that prefers to transport goods via rocket over building a robust logistics infrastructure with parts in local warehouses.
There arevof course things that you can’t easily store in warehouses until you need one extremely urgently. But many of those things tend to be delicate.
But okay let’s assume there is a market. You still have the issue of the last mile.
You need to transport your cargo to the launchpad and from where the rocker lands to the customer.
I assume there are regulations in most places that prevent you from launching and landing spacecraft directly next to the start and endbpoint of a delivery.
This thing has to compete with what we do today when we very urgently need to transport things over vast distances, which most often involves planes and either trucks or helicopters to and from the airport.
I have seen things where a lot of money was spent because even more money was on the line to get some part delivered halfway across the continent. I don’t think a rocket could have helped much.
Finally there is a problem that what they are advertising is basically an ICBM or something with comparable capabilities. Lots of people will have issues with that. From fears it might be mistaken for an explosives delivery vehicle to fearsvit might be misused as one to fears it might unintentionally become one due to an accident.
I remember a long time ago in a science class at one of the major museums learning about why food is dehydrated before it goes up in the space shuttles, it was because water is heavy and the cost to bring up every pound into space is insanely expensive and goes up with every additional pound. So bringing just gobs of water or even the water in food is expensive. I’m sure this technology which will definitely NOT be used for heavy metal military applications will be cheap to get those items up into space, right? Right!?