Traveling around the world in 80 days seemed incredible in days
of old. Traveling around the world in 80 minutes seems incredible
today. Only cosmonauts can travel so fast. But things are changing.
Specialists at the Moscow Institute developed a model of aircraft
that is capably of carrying passengers and cargo to any location of
the planet at a speed undreamed-of by modern aviators.
The space plane will be able to reach a speed of 30,000 km per hour.
According to researchers' estimates, such a speed will enable the
space plane to fly from Moscow to Paris in 20 min, from Moscow to
New York in 50 min, and from Moscow to Sydney in one hour and six
minutes."The building of two active space planes will require
from 6 to 8 billion rubles," says the director of the institute. "It
will take us from 5 to 8 years to build them provided that the
financing starts in the nearest future," adds he. [english.pravda.ru] |
If his number are correct then each plane would cost about $140 million
each.
If his numbers are off by 100%, then final cost would be 16 Billion Rubles.
At todays exchange rate of 28.63 Rubles to 1 US Dollar, the total cost of
the program would be approximately $558,854,350 or 560 million dollars,
which corresponds to 280 million dollars per space-plane.
Currently a Boeing 777 costs $238 million.
A European consortium of nations raised 13 billion dollars to build the
Airbus A380, which has a price tag between $238 million to $286 million
per plane.
In the FY2005 budget, Congress approved the purchase of 24 F22 Raptors at
a cost of 4.1 Billion dollars or $170 million per F22 Raptor.
The total R&D investment into the F22 Raptor and the next generation F35
Joint Strike Fighter has already surpassed tens of billions of dollars.
The final price tag for an F35 is expected to easily exceed $200 million
per plane.
Are we getting overcharged?
Do we need either jet for air supremacy?
The next time your trapped on an airplane on an 11 hour flight, think how
our limited resources are being spent. |
