The Space Review:

Is the universe big enough for the three of us? (credit: NASA/John
Frassanito & Associates)

Can't all space nerds get along?

by Michael Huang
Monday, July 30, 2007

Observers of space politics have identified three interest groups in the
civil space sector: government-funded scientific robots/machines,
government-funded human spaceflight, and private space industry. They have
been called the Sagan, Von Braun, and O'Neill models respectively. Each
group argues against the others in an attempt to establish itself as the
dominant paradigm.

The question is whether these conflicts are at all necessary. Even the
names of these interest groups are not as clear-cut as they might seem.
Sagan advocated colonization as well as robotic exploration in his book
Pale Blue Dot, von Braun was instrumental in both the first American
satellite and the first American astronaut, and O'Neill supported both
governmental and private approaches to colonization. They arguably have
more similarities than differences. Their respective
organizations-Planetary Society, National Space Society (and Mars Society),
and Space Frontier Foundation-have different priorities but share many
common interests.

Looking at the positive and promotional side of these interest groups, they
could be summarized as pro-science, pro-human, and pro-private. There is
nothing inconsistent with holding all three positions. One can
simultaneously support scientific unmanned programs, human spaceflight
programs, and space tourism ventures without any contradictions. It is a
non-zero-sum game, where all three can make progress at the same time. An
example of this would be an expanding space tourism industry happening at
the same time as an increase in the total NASA budget (including both human
and robotic programs).

What would a non-zero-sum future look like? More joint activities between
the interest groups would be a good beginning.

Zero-sum games also exist in space politics. Pro-science vs. anti-science,
pro-human vs. anti-human, and pro-private vs. anti-private are debates
where gains by one side equal losses by the other. As a participant in the
human spaceflight debate, my personal impression is that the anti-human
group has particularly extreme viewpoints. Calls for the elimination of
human spaceflight regularly appear in space opinion articles, so much so
that it has become a tired clich of the field. It is impossible to reach a
compromise in a zero-sum game where one side wants something to exist and
the other side wants it eliminated. Hopefully the pro-science, pro-human
and pro-private groups will all win their respective zero-sum games and we
can stop playing them.

What would a non-zero-sum future look like? More joint activities between
the interest groups would be a good beginning. An issue like better launch
technology is of common interest to robotic, human, and private
spaceflight. The various space societies could also cooperate on
membership. Space enthusiasts rarely join all the space societies because
it means filling out several application forms and paying multiple fees.
The societies could offer a joint membership or establish an umbrella
organization. Not only would the societies benefit from increased
membership, but the members would have access to a wider range of space
projects and viewpoints.

The non-zero-sum game could also be applied to that other great topic in
space politics: space and Earth. Again, there is nothing inconsistent with
supporting valuable projects both on Earth and in space. People who try to
portray space and Earth as a zero-sum debate usually have an anti-space
agenda in mind. Like its counterparts, pro-space vs. anti-space is a
zero-sum game which should be won and ended. It's fitting that the
pro-space side would be best served by a united political coalition.

Michael Huang's previous articles for The Space Review include "Humans vs.
robots: who should argue against humans in space?", "The other side of the
Fermi paradox", and "Humans for humans' sake".

--
R. A. Hettinga
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Something all the "space nerds" should be able to agree on is reducing
launch costs. It works out best for everybody: NASA can launch more
manned missions with the budget they have (and if they get more bang
for the buck, it will be easier to argue they should be given more
bucks); NASA can launch more UNmanned missions with the budget they
have (and if they get more bang for the buck, it will be easier to
argue they should be given more bucks); the private sector can put
through things like space tourism, SSPS, and yes, the O'Neillian dream
of huge rotating habitats could at last become a reality. Even the
military would benefit.

Then everybody could argue about what should be done with the private
and public space dollars, but with each of those dollars going a lot
further, maybe they wouldn't feel the need.

On Aug 01, 2007, at 16:20 UTC, Xenophile wrote:

> Something all the "space nerds" should be able to agree on is reducing
> launch costs.

Yes, I think they do, but there's much disagreement about how to
accomplish that. Some think NASA can do it; others put more faith in
the commercial sector; still others think we need some radical new
approach, like a launch gun or Polywell fusion drive [1] or some such.

Best,
- Joe

[1] http://www.strout.net/info/science/polywell/

Joe Strout -- joe@...
Strout Custom Solutions, LLC

--- In spacesettlers, joe wrote:

> Yes, I think they do, but there's much disagreement about how to
> accomplish that. Some think NASA can do it; others put more faith in
> the commercial sector; still others think we need some radical new
> approach, like a launch gun or Polywell fusion drive [1] or some such.

So have NASA do all they can, and the private sector can do it too.
For that matter, let NASA spend $5 billion a year on doing it as
quickly as possible with the tech available now, and another $5
billion a year researching the more far-out stuff.

Or have NASA offer $5 billion dollars to whichever private company can
do it best in, say, the next five years. NASA doesn't give them a
cent to do the R&D with, they just give it away to whoever does best.
Then they only have to spend that $5 billion once. They can then
spend the same on fusion drives, space elevators, ELM guns, and so
forth, only every year.

> From: Xenophile
> Or have NASA offer $5 billion dollars to whichever private company can
> do it best in, say, the next five years.

This is the way it should be done. Though I would add 'and the major
aerospace companies are not allowed to play' just to discourage backroom
deals.

The problem is defining 'success'. If some backstabbing crony at nasa
wispers into the wrong ears 'No design with criteria X will be seriously
considdered' all those involved will take it to heart, and no one will put
any serious investigation into whatever benifits that criteria X offers.

This is pretty much what happened to the X-33 programme. Dan Goldin give
strict instructions to the entrants, and then NASA civil service undermined
the process by implying there were hidden rules. Hence X-vehicle became
prototypes, testing ideas became defending concepts, and intelligent
judgement became a two billion dollar bribe by lockheed martin.

Remember also that the US manned space programme represents 2/3rds of NASA's
budget and workforce, and if anyone solves the low-cost problem, then their
jobs will quickly stop existing, as will all the political power they and
their congressional friends can wield. Ditto for large segments of high tech
industry across America. The job of the USAF's space section will become a
lot more complex and they will lose their near monopoly. These people may
covertly or overtly oppose change.

John

At 6:25 PM +0100 8/1/07, ANTIcarrot wrote:
>> From: Xenophile
>> Or have NASA offer $5 billion dollars to whichever private company can
>> do it best in, say, the next five years.
>
>This is the way it should be done.

Are you kidding???

The government steals a pile of cash from the taxpayers, then "overheads"
the vast majority of it, and then "gives" $5billion of to a business.

Why steal the money at tax time to begin with?

Why can't a business *earn* its money the way it's supposed to be done?

Oh. That's right. Profit is eeeevil...

Sheesh.

Cheers,
RAH

--
R. A. Hettinga
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

--- In spacesettlers, "R.A. Hettinga" wrote:

> Are you kidding???
>
> The government steals a pile of cash from the taxpayers, then
> "overheads" the vast majority of it, and then "gives" $5billion of
> to a business.
>
> Why steal the money at tax time to begin with?
>
> Why can't a business *earn* its money the way it's supposed to be
> done?
>
> Oh. That's right. Profit is eeeevil...
>
> Sheesh.
>
> Cheers,
> RAH

Sheesh indeed. Nobody said anything about profit being evil. You can
call off the House Committee. I'm talking about getting us into
space, and the "all taxation is theft" mantra may be entertaining, but
it is also irrelevant to this conversation.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophile"
>
> Something all the "space nerds" should be able to agree on is reducing
> launch costs.

Iirc there's an argument for reducing *payload* costs instead. Current
satellites (let alone interplanetary spacecraft) are basically
prototypes, and correspondingly expensive. Wherever it was that I read
this, I got the impression that decreasing launch costs isn't rocket
science -- it's looking up the results of last generation's rocket
science, combined with a willingness to tolerate a few more explosions
on the launch pad.

NO NO NO!

Where would aviation be today if they had decided that the best thing
to do was to "tolerate more explosions at the airport?" Putting
thousands of people into space (which you're going to have to, if you
want to fill a habitat) requires INCREASED safety, not an
explosion killing hundreds (and costing millions) every few days. It
doesn't matter how cheap your rocket is, if nobody wants to fly it.

I agree that perceived lack of safety could bring space ventures (especially space tourism) to a sudden halt, but interestingly, automobile travel is incredibly unsafe. Its the most dangerous thing we humans do, yet people aren't the least bit afraid of it for some reason. Still, a rocket carrying tourists to a space hotel exploding would be front page headlines. The Challenger blew up in 1986. How many of us can name a car crash that occurred that year? Likewise, the Columbia blew up in 2003. Few of us can remember a car crash that year, or even a plane crash for that matter. Disasters in the early, pioneering days of space settlement would be catastrophic to public perception. Perhaps someday, space travel will be so common that a disaster or two here or there will be tolerable, but for the next few decades, the public will need to feel safe, or few will go.

Douglas May
CWA Local 6215 - Steward

From: Xenophile
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2007 9:18:16 AM
Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: Can't all space nerds get along?

NO NO NO!

Where would aviation be today if they had decided that the best thing

to do was to "tolerate more explosions at the airport?" Putting

thousands of people into space (which you're going to have to, if you

want to fill a habitat) requires INCREASED safety, not an

explosion killing hundreds (and costing millions) every few days. It

doesn't matter how cheap your rocket is, if nobody wants to fly it.

Passengers are not cheaper payloads. People will still need high-
reliability launch systems, but obviously what I'm saying implies
that most payloads should not be people.

If we have spacecraft assembled from from mass-produced modular
components, and a hundred launches blow up out of a thousand in a
typical year, no one will care. The won't be reading about the
failed launches: they'll be reading about the asteroid arriving at L6
and the big drop in the price of catalytic converters because of all
the platinum suddenly on the market.

As for the space tourists, we need a better name. Would we remember
Sir Edmund Hillary if he'd been known as a "mountain tourist"?

More to the point, if you're dead set on tourism as the future of
space, then yes you need ultra-cheap ultra-safe launches. But not
every space nerd is. The number of very very rich people interested
in going to space isn't going to sustain a hotel, so you need it
cheap enough for the merely kinda rich. And tourism will dry up
after the first "Hindenburg" story hits the media echo chamber. Otoh
if everyone's bottom line is on the line because space is doing
something big like large scale solar energy and fuel cells, people
will accept a few deaths just as they do when it's coal miners.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, DOUG MAY wrote:
>
> I agree that perceived lack of safety could bring space ventures
(especially space tourism) to a sudden halt, but interestingly,
automobile travel is incredibly unsafe. Its the most dangerous thing
we humans do, yet people aren't the least bit afraid of it for some
reason. Still, a rocket carrying tourists to a space hotel exploding
would be front page headlines. The Challenger blew up in 1986. How
many of us can name a car crash that occurred that year? Likewise,
the Columbia blew up in 2003. Few of us can remember a car crash that
year, or even a plane crash for that matter. Disasters in the early,
pioneering days of space settlement would be catastrophic to public
perception. Perhaps someday, space travel will be so common that a
disaster or two here or there will be tolerable, but for the next few
decades, the public will need to feel safe, or few will go.
>
> Douglas May
> CWA Local 6215 - Steward
>
> From: Xenophile
> To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2007 9:18:16 AM
> Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: Can't all space nerds get along?
>
> NO NO NO!
>
> Where would aviation be today if they had decided that the best
thing
>
> to do was to "tolerate more explosions at the airport?" Putting
>
> thousands of people into space (which you're going to have to, if
you
>
> want to fill a habitat) requires INCREASED safety, not an
>
> explosion killing hundreds (and costing millions) every few days.
It

Well of course it doesn't have to be tourism OR powersats. Getting
launch costs down for one (won't have any success for either one if
you don't) will help bring it down for the other.

Sir Edmund was a pioneer. The dozen or so people who climb Everest
every year are tourists. They aren't supposed to be remembered.

Captain James Cook: Pioneer, first European to go to Hawaii.
Michael Lopez: Tourist, loved the hula dancers.

Neil Armstrong: Pioneer, first man to walk on the Moon.
Me: Tourist, don't tell my wife I sneaked off to catch the low-G
strippers' show.

On Aug 11, 2007, at 14:18 UTC, Xenophile wrote:

> NO NO NO!
>
> Where would aviation be today if they had decided that the best thing
> to do was to "tolerate more explosions at the airport?"

Xeno, that IS how early aviation was! It was a deadly activity, and
both pilots and passengers were lost at what would be considered an
appalling rate today.

A better question would be: where would aviation be today if they had
been as risk-averse then as we are now, and the government had stepped
in with harsh regulations attempting to ensure that nobody got hurt?
(My guess: we'd still be travelling cross-country in trains... of
course, then we could ask the same questions about trains!)

Best,
- Joe

Joe Strout -- joe@...
Strout Custom Solutions, LLC

Aviation didn't get popular until it got safer. We've been in the
"more explosions" phase for forty years and more. And for those who
push the envelope, who are pioneers, it's liable to stay that way.
The first few laser-powered craft might blow up or get half a wing
melted off. The first meta-stable helium rocket will probably
vaporize itself.

But tourists, business travelers, construction workers, and so on want
to stay alive. Not everybody is (or should be) a test pilot.

I'm wanting to get basic to-orbit spaceflight out of the pioneering
phase and into the rich jet-setters phase (actually, I want it in the
mass-market phase, but accept that you probably can't jump from
pioneering to mass-market in one step).

On Aug 13, 2007, at 16:09 UTC, Xenophile wrote:

> Aviation didn't get popular until it got safer. We've been in the
> "more explosions" phase for forty years and more.

Agreed, but why? I think it's mainly because spacecraft have only been
done by large government programs. Aviation didn't develop that way;
NACA was a technology enabler, not an agency to "do" air travel for all
the country's needs. NASA has been just the opposite. Only now is
that changing, with a lot of serious commercial enterprises making a go
of it on their own. The key thing is to not over-regulate this nascent
industry, but to allow it to experiment and make mistakes. That's the
only way towards progress.

And these companies know that safety is crucial to their business;
they'll be doing everything they can to protect their passengers. We
don't need the government dictating exactly how they do that, or making
space travel in general so expensive and difficult (legally) that only
huge dinosaurs can afford to even try.

> I'm wanting to get basic to-orbit spaceflight out of the pioneering
> phase and into the rich jet-setters phase (actually, I want it in the
> mass-market phase, but accept that you probably can't jump from
> pioneering to mass-market in one step).

Well, sure, me too. But I think we still have quite a ways to go
before we get there, with lots of different things to try. By the end
of the 21st century, early 21st-century launch concepts will look as
quaint as many early aviation concepts do to our eyes.

Best,
- Joe

Joe Strout -- joe@...
Strout Custom Solutions, LLC

I think we are (mostly) agreed.

The interstate highway system has been a godsend for truckers, and
hooray to the federal government for building it.
But the government doesn't run interstate trucking, and thank God for
that. They regulate it, but there are lobbyists who keep it from
getting out of hand.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophile"
>
> Well of course it doesn't have to be tourism OR powersats. Getting
> launch costs down for one (won't have any success for either one if
> you don't)

But it's not obvious that you can't do powersats and platinum with
current-technology launch costs, if you make the robots cheap enough
that you can comfortably lose 10% and smart enough that you don't have
to send any humans to fetch the asteroid material.

That way when you do get tourism and colonization, you only need to
launch the people not the supplies. Plus there are extra destinations
for the tourists: historic mining and manufacturing facilities, the
infrastructure that powers the world, and so on.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, joe@... wrote:
>
> On Aug 13, 2007, at 16:09 UTC, Xenophile wrote:
>
> > Aviation didn't get popular until it got safer. We've been in the
> > "more explosions" phase for forty years and more.
>
> Agreed, but why? I think it's mainly because spacecraft have only
> been done by large government programs. Aviation didn't develop that
> way;

It did take aviation a while to mass-market, though. The Wright
Brothers flew in 1903, and commercial aviation wasn't a big deal until
the 40s.

> From: Dan Wylie-Sears
> But it's not obvious that you can't do powersats and platinum with
> current-technology

Double negative. So you agree it is possible then?

And please be more careful with words like technology. What you meant was
'current designs'. The technology we have is more than up to the job of
building something capable of getting into space cheaply and safely. It's
just not up to building the all singing and all dancing
space-plane/transport/fighter that can lift 200 tons to polar orbit, fly
half way round the world after reentry, also function as a 90 minute
passenger ship to Australia, and make chillian fries.

Richard 'the most evil man in the world' Nixen *specifically* *chose* the us
shuttle to be cheap to operate and be expensive to run. As a result he saved
himself about four billion dollars in 1970. Since then we've spent about
FOUR HUNDRED billion on running it. That was a stupid decision. It shouldn't
be that hard to avoid repeating it. The DC-X demonstrated that not every
reusable rocket has to look shuttle shaped nor suffer from the same
problems.

The proof is there. The proof exists. Now people just have to believe it.

John

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "ANTIcarrot"
>
> > From: Dan Wylie-Sears
> > But it's not obvious that you can't do powersats and platinum with
> > current-technology
>
> Double negative. So you agree it is possible then?

I'm saying that as far as I know it's possible to do economically with
current underlying technology and without any big-deal improvements in
design to reduce launch cost -- provided we reduce payload cost for
most payloads. So (as long as we take cheapest-available rockets as
the standard of comparison, not the Shuttle) reducing launch cost maybe
shouldn't be a very high priority.

From: Dan Wylie-Sears

> I'm saying that as far as I know it's possible to do economically with

> current underlying technology and without any big-deal improvements in

> design to reduce launch cost -- provided we reduce payload cost for
> most payloads. So (as long as we take cheapest-available rockets as
> the standard of comparison, not the Shuttle) reducing launch cost
maybe
> shouldn't be a very high priority.

The way of looking at this which I've come to accept is that if we were
to ramp up to the traffic model needed to support something like SPS or
asteroidal platinum even with existing rocket systems, we'd see the
cost/lb plummet markedly.

It could well be that in the space advocacy community there's too much
emphasis on new technology, when what's needed is the application
leading to greatly-expanded traffic models.

Regards,

Mike Combs

Fine. Let's get launch costs down by launching a zillion small
chemical rockets. Or by launching a quarter-zillion Sea Dragons. Or
by launching 0.1 zillion Sea Dragons and three quarters of a zillion
little rockets.

I'm all for laser power, maglev launchers, cold fusion if there were
to be such a thing. I'm also happy to use H2/O2 or kerosene or
whatever will work. Clarified butter has been suggested, and I'm
happy with that.

But this chicken/egg thing is getting us nowhere.
If launch costs were lower, there would be more launches.
If there were more launches, launch costs would be lower.
AAAGGGHHH!!!

Either somebody is going to have to do a hundred or more launches a
year AT CURRENT COSTS and KEEP ON DOING IT until the sheer number of
launches brings the per-launch cost down (way down), or somebody's
going to have to find a way to bring costs down (way down) even given
the low number of launches. And if somebody can do THAT, then there
can be lot of launches, bringing the cost down still further.

And I personally don't care if it's a vinegar/baking soda rocket, as
long as it does the job.

Joe,

Regarding risk aversion, you might enjoy State of Fear by Michael
Crichton, since that modern tendency is one of the targets of the
fiction work. Besides that, there is an excellent bibliography.
Although I wish the characterization were a little less predictable,
he has really nailed the modernist take on the future, of
the "amputate our desires" variety. Actually, according to
Chrichton, it's amputate everybody else's desires, not those of the
environmental in-crowd. (The focus of the work is the really bad
science but really big business of the catastrophe industry.)

Jan Baker

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, joe@... wrote:
>
> On Aug 11, 2007, at 14:18 UTC, Xenophile wrote:
>
> > NO NO NO!
> >
> > Where would aviation be today if they had decided that the best
thing
> > to do was to "tolerate more explosions at the airport?"
>
> Xeno, that IS how early aviation was! It was a deadly activity,
and
> both pilots and passengers were lost at what would be considered an
> appalling rate today.
>
> A better question would be: where would aviation be today if they
had
> been as risk-averse then as we are now, and the government had
stepped
> in with harsh regulations attempting to ensure that nobody got
hurt?

From: Xenophile

> But this chicken/egg thing is getting us nowhere.
> If launch costs were lower, there would be more launches.
> If there were more launches, launch costs would be lower.
> AAAGGGHHH!!!

The big hope right now is that maybe space tourism will break us out of
this catch-22. It can start out small, given a few extremely-wealthy
types who will put a premium on being among the first travelers. But
even an early space-tourism outfit launching once a month will be
beating NASA's launch rate. And to stay in business they won't want to
stay with that traffic model, but move on to weekly launches and then
maybe even several a week.

At the same time there's progress on that front, they're also making
progress in higher and longer suborbital hops, until finally LEO is only
a modest increment away.

Then we might take off down a rapidly-accelerating development path of
increased traffic models bringing down prices to where more can be done
in space, leading to more traffic, leading to even lower prices.

Anyway, that's the hope.

Regards,

Mike Combs

Hi Mike,

Yes the price should come down markedly as usage goes
up. In fact if usage goes up a lot, competition will
drive prices even lower. However, even with a lot of
usage, there are a few things that may limit just how
low launch costs can go. The most fundamental is the
rocket equation and staging. Even if we do an
excellent job at designing rockets and their motors,
and using LOX and LH2, we need at least 20 tons of
fuel and rocket, to get 1 ton to LEO. Another factor
is that the savings of using re-usable rockets is
about equal to the penalty of the extra 'margin'
required on re-usables. This means that we can start
out our "learning curve" with the cheapest (reliable)
per pound to orbit expendable rocket, then use that
rocket to bring down costs by using more and more of
them. This may result in the 10th rocket costing
perhaps 90% of that of the first, the 100th maybe 81%,
the 1000th maybe 72%, and so on. It won't get much
cheaper than half price. Look at the USSR's, now
Russia's rockets. They have been rolling out some of
the same rockets for almost 5 decades, and sure they
are some of the cheapest, but not that much cheaper.

This is one of the strongest reasons I advocate
Electromagnetic Launch Systems (EMLS). This entirely
new system might cost between $1.5B and $50B,
depending on it's capability and acceleration. (I am
working on both the cheap - low mass, high
acceleration system for hard cargo like SPS hardware,
and a high mass low acceleration [but expensive] EMLS
for people.) Anyway, here the non-recurring costs of
R&D&Design & testing and construction are amortized
over the future launches. Operation cost should be
added to this fixed cost. So if the several billion
dollars to build it were paid for by the government
for example, each launch would only need a small
enclosing structure with small fuel tanks and rocket
motors to circularize the orbit, small relatively
simple autonomous navigation and guidance electronics
and of course the electrical energy to launch it.
This would be in the neighborhood of $50 to $100 per
pound (mass) or $110 to $220 per Kg. I'm sure almost
any space project could be seriously contemplated at
these launch rates. The problem is the government
really doesn't want this to happen, for a number of
reasons, at least not yet. (They may change their
mind if another country steps up with such a system.)

So to do this, it will need to be done as a commercial
venture. OK, you take your plan to the VCs or the
bank and they will ask when will we break even? when
will we have a return of our investment? When will we
have 20X our initial investment? You can lie and say
that because your system is so much less expensive
than current rocket launch rates, you expect yearly
number of launches to increase 3 times, 5 times or
even 10 times. But with only 17 launches per year on
average, that would only be 50 to 170 launches per
year. If you only had to pay the (14%) interest on
the $2B spent on the EMLS, for the first few years,
that's $280M per year. That's $1.65M to $5.6M per
launch (or per ton). At the more realistic end (50
launches per year), assuming $80 per pound operational
costs, this comes to $5,770,000 per ton, and compares
with the Falcon and some of the newer low cost rockets
available now or very soon.

The only real solution that I can see, is for someone
who has a real need for low cost launch to come along
and say, here is the first $1B, after you get your
EMLS built we will buy 18,000 (1 ton) launches per
year (minimum), at $20 per pound plus the approx. $80
per pound operations cost.

Then access to space would be $100 per pound. At
least for cargo. (Note: if we added say $10 per pound
as a depreciation & R&D tax, our next EMLS could be
larger and slower and able to launch people at 3 Gee
(Max) to LEO.)

Who is this imaginary entity with the billions of
dollars? Well, if they were start it would be the
Shell Oils, Mobil-Exxon's and the Texaco people,
wanting to get in on Solar Power Satellites, or the
Gold and Platinum mining companies who just made huge
sums but see their supplies also drying up. We might
even be able to find enough "green" people who see the
advantages of moving Electric Power Generation (to
start with) and (later) almost all heavy industry
off-world.

So how do we get people aware of these possibilities?

Dave Handwerk

--- "Combs, Mike" wrote:

--- In spacesettlers, Dave Handwerk wrote:

> So how do we get people aware of these possibilities?

Television. We need fact-based, diamond-hard sci-fi TV shows about
this stuff. I've tried writing one, but I'm not really that much of a
writer. What I've got is over in FILES, if you like. Warning, not
much there.