Wartime Launch Rates
Unfortunately, war is one of the ways that technology advances.
The first rocket to travel into space was the German V-2 rocket. After its first test flight, on 18 March 1942, 6048 rockets were produced. More than half of those launched by March 27, 1945. The program cost between $10 billion and $40 billion in 2024 dollars.
Once production started, the production cost was halved in about 15 months. The final V2 production cost was about $2.1 million each in todays dollars. This decrease helped increase the rate of production.
In those 3 years, the rate of launches doubled every 93 days for almost 1200 days. At its peak, up to six launches happened in an hour and more than 30 launches in a day. Even under increasing pressure from day-time bombing, the launch rates continued to double until Germany surrendered.
This increase in launch rate and decrease in costs lines up with Wrights law.
Looking at these trends, it highlights why the 1950’s aerospace industry saw so many possibilities in moving research, industry, and mankind into space. Launch logistics were and are the first key to enabling the space economy. Between the 1950s and mid 1970’s similar exponential growth happened.
With the aerospace collapse in the wake of Apollo and the energy crisis at the same time, a 50-year period of stagnation in launch followed.
In the past 4 years, led by Spacex, launch rates have resumed following an exponential trend. More launch providers are coming into the market, so there is an additional possibility of growth.
The industrialization of space will be jump started by cheap launch, but it needs mass in orbit to scale. Space based solar power (SBSP) is a self-funding way to get the critical mass into orbit. Governments and investors should seriously consider SBSP, not just for energy production, but also as way to fund getting mass into orbit need for expanding the spaceeconomy.
The urgency of WWII shows how fast industry can scale. Fortunately, SpaceX shows how fast private industry can scale when motivated by an audacious mission and the profit motive.
SBSP will benefit from this growth. Once deployed, not only can it scale and supply abundant energy for global prosperity, but it can also pay to get the materials into orbit needed to build a space faring civilization.
Bibliography
· Michael Neufeld's "The Rocket and the Reich"
· https://www.v2rocket.com/start/deployment/timeline.html
· https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches
· https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket
Flight data data set created from the test launches listed on Wikipedia and the operational launches listed at www.v2rocket.com
