[Spaceships] Benchmarks for spacecraft cost

[Agemegos]

In GURPS Spaceships spaceship components have the following prices per ton.

Armour, ice                $ negligible
Armour, stone              $ negligible
Armour, steel              $     4,000
Armour, light alloy        $    10,000
Armour, metallic laminate  $    20,000
Armour, advanced " "       $    40,000
Armour, nanocomposite      $   100,000
Armour, organic            $     6,000
Armour, diamondoid         $   200,000
Armour, exotic laminate    $   400,000
Controls                   $    40,000
Defensive ECM              $   200,000
Comm/sensors, enhanced     $    40,000
    ", tactical or science $   200,000
    ", multipurpose        $   400,000
External clamp             $     2,000
Factory                    $ 1,000,000
Habitat                    $    20,000
Hangar bay                 $     2,000
Jet engine                 $   200,000
Mining/refinery            $    20,000
Open space                 $     1,000
Passenger seating          $     6,000
Power plant, chemical      $    10,000
  "     " , fission        $    60,000
  "     " , fusion         $   200,000
  "     " , antimatter     $   400,000
  "     " , super fusion   $   600,000
  "     " , conversion     $ 1,200,000
Ramscoop                   $ 2,000,000
Reaction engine, chemical  $    40,000
    "    " , HEDM          $    60,000
    "    " , electric      $    30,000
    "    " , fission       $   100,000
    "    " , nuclear pulse $   200,000
    "    " , fusion        $   200,000
    "    " , AM thermal    $   100,000
    "    " , AM plasma     $   100,000
    "    " , AM plas torch $   200,000
    "    " , super " " "   $   400,000
    "    " , AM pion       $   200,000
    "    " , AM pion torch $   400,000
    "    " , TC torch      $   400,000  
    "    " , Super TC torch$ 1,000,000
Robot arm                  $   200,000
Soft-landing system        $    10,000
Solar panels               $   100,000
Space sails                $   200,000
Weapons                    $ 1,200,000
   "   , spinal mount      $ 1,000,000
 - ammunition, cannon      $   100,000
 - ammunition, missiles    $ 1,000,000

Fuel, water                $        20
  " , coolant              $       250
  " , ionisable (argon)    $       180
  " , rock dust            $         2
  " , rocket fuel          $       800
  " , hydrogen             $     2,000
  " , jet fuel             $     4,000
  " , HEDM                 $     6,000
  " , AM & hydrogen/water  $    20,000
  " , nuclear pellets      $    50,000
  " , uranium-salt water   $   100,000
  " , AM-boosted H2/H2O    $12,000,000
  " , nuclear bombs        $   250,000
  " , 50% AM       $10,000,000,000,000

Leaving aside GURPS's pervading problem of things not getting cheaper with TL improvement, do those figures seem okay? Is jet fuel really $16 per gallon? Is argon really only 9% the price of hydrogen? Should an external clamp cost only half as much per ton as dumb steel armour?

What benchmarks can we establish for what things ought to cost, eg. how do comm/sensor arrays compare to real life avionics prices? What does a Pratt&Whitney aero jet engine cost per ton? Are airbags really $10,000 per ton?

[Crakkerjakk]

Hm. I think our first problem would be to establish what kind of dollar we are using. Does 1 USD at current value = 1 GURPS dollar?

And Jet Fuel is apparently currently 3.10 USD/gal.

Also, what are we looking at for price? If we can find something(such as jet fuel) available currently, thats all well and good, but how do we assign value to steel spaceship armor? Current bulk cost of steel? Whats the cost of turning that steel into armor shaped to fit on a craft? I'm sure you've already got some ideas about these questions, I think it's just good to define our assumptions before we attempt this, so we're not working at cross-purposes.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Leaving aside GURPS's pervading problem of things not getting cheaper with TL improvement, do those figures seem okay? Is jet fuel really $16 per gallon? Is argon really only 9% the price of hydrogen? Should an external clamp cost only half as much per ton as dumb steel armour?

I don't know, but even 'dumb steel' is quite expensive in armour grade alloys, especially when you consider heat treating and working.

[laserdog]

Is posting the complete price list from Spaceships strictly necessary here?

I mean it is a copyrighted work...

[TheDS]

It's a credited excerpt, it's not nearly enough to build your own spaceships without the book, and I don't think that information is available in that manner in the book, so it's probably all right.

Of the questions he raised, the jet fuel might be overpriced, and the argon seems underpriced in comparison to the hydrogen, so I'd be interested in hearing if those were correct or typos.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by laserdog

Is posting the complete price list from Spaceships strictly necessary here?

Well, for a start it isn't complete. And in the second place prices don't appear in that form in the PDF: except for the fuel and ammunition, I had to calculate them all. So this is neither complete nor a price list from Spaceships. It isn't a breach of copyright because it isn't a copy. Even if it were a copy, it would be a small portion of the work reproduced for the purposes of scholarship or review.

So we can squirt that copyright bogeyman with a water-pistol and get on with what we were doing.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Rupert

I don't know, but even 'dumb steel' is quite expensive in armour grade alloys, especially when you consider heat treating and working.

Yeah, but a clamp to hold a spaceship has moving parts, actuators, controls, connectors, and is probably made of high-grade and highly-treated materials itself.

[thtraveller]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Should an external clamp cost only half as much per ton as dumb steel armour?

I would guess the intention was that the mass included external cargo, but that somehow didn't make it through to the final version. Clamps are minor items in other Gurps design systems.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by thtraveller

I would guess the intention was that the mass included external cargo, but that somehow didn't make it through to the final version. Clamps are minor items in other Gurps design systems.

Now there are explicit rules for diminished acceleration and delta-v when there is something in the clamps.

[thtraveller]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Is jet fuel really $16 per gallon? Is argon really only 9% the price of hydrogen?

I make it closer to $12, in any case I think it a fair assumption that the price of oil based jet fuel will rise considerably.

Hydrogen and Argon look to be roughly right in comparison, but both about an order of magnitude cheaper than today. If we get much cheaper electricity (fusion, better solar panels) this is semi-plausible.