On Tuesday, October 22, 2002, at 06:25 PM, Ian Woollard wrote:

> Space is
> not a natural government monopoly; although NASA tries to make it look
> that way.

NASA started the communication satellite business and got out of the
way. NASA no longer does expendable rockets. NASA still does Earth
imaging, but a commercial market is developing. NASA actually has a
pretty good record of leaving a field once there is a real commercial
alternative. There is no commercial alternative, or much of a market
(yet), for manned space or deep space exploration, the areas NASA is
into the most.

Space tourism could be our ticket to the stars. Save your pennies,
suborbital flights for $100,000 may start in 2005! See
http://www.spaceadventures.com/suborbital for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

On Wednesday, October 23, 2002, at 11:26 AM, Ed Minchau wrote:

> At the very
> least, NASA should be adding an Aft Cargo Carrier to the external
> tank of the space shuttle, and taking that tank to orbit.

My buddies who did this sort of thing once told me that CFD studies
suggest that this won't work. Changes the aerodynamics of the vehicle
too much.

The dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid because they weren't
space-faring. It's almost as if Gaia then thought "Well, dinosaurs
worked pretty well, but space-faring is necessary. Maybe I'll should
try mammals this time." Humanity is now developing systems to detect and
deflect asteroids, and could build orbital space colonies to spread
beyond Earth to insure life would survive a planetary catastrophe.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

On Wednesday, October 23, 2002, at 11:26 AM, Ed Minchau wrote:

> Micro-gee manufacturing will be
> very useful for pharmaceutical companies and nanotech.

Some things have been done in this area, but it always been possible to
get most of the same benefits on the ground at a tiny fraction of the
cost. There may be a killer app out there but we haven't found it yet.

The International Space Station (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr. Tito
going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was old, smelly, crowded and
probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shinny, much more
roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts of how
great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

On Friday, October 25, 2002, at 10:59 AM, Ed Minchau wrote:

> Oh there's money in it all right - if governments stay out of the
> way.

Try selling a space business in today's investment climate. Even
conventional comm. sats. are a hard sell now. Between the telecom
meltdown and a couple of recent space business bankrupcies there's not
much private money available now.

The materials in one asteroid (the largest ) are sufficient to make
orbital space colonies with ~500 times the surface area of the Earth in
usable real estate. See http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSettlement/
for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Al Globus wrote:

>On Tuesday, October 22, 2002, at 02:43 PM, Ian Woollard wrote:
>
>>The question isn't what you spend. It's what you launch. I've seen
>>figures that suggest that the true cost of launching a man, even with
>>low tech expendables can be as low as $100,000 per person.
>>
>>
>
>You are probably thinking of the Russian tourist project that intends to
>launch 2 tourists at a time on a sub-orbital flight for $100,000
>apiece.
>
No. I would not make that mistake. The solution to the problems of
reducing launch costs is primarily that of minimising initial
development costs and making a relatively low tech reusable system. The
other big problem is maintaining very high reliability so you can
actually use it for your chosen market.

On Fri, 25 Oct 2002, Al Globus wrote:

>
> On Tuesday, October 22, 2002, at 05:33 PM, Arthur P. Smith wrote:
>
> > Now launch costs do improve with time; probably we can expect
> > somewhere around 20% per year.
>
> Sounds pretty optimistic. Do you have data for the last 5-10 years?
> That would give a good idea of what one might expect if we haven't hit
> any walls or see a breakthrough.

Spaceref has some recent numbers - see for example this column:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=301

which has a wide range of numbers, pre Atlas-5 and Delta-4. The newer
vehicles seem to have lower costs generally, for example pricing
for Ariane 5 vs. Ariane 4 launches is $3788/lb vs. $4762/lb, or
20% less. If the changes in rules that Charles mentioned have an effect
on the commercial market, we should see a shift to use the Russian
hardware, with 2001 prices as low as $1167/lb, or 70% below Ariane.

If other numbers that have been bandied about are correct, some
of the Russian launch costs may actually be as low as $300/lb,
so there's quite a bit of room there to keep cutting prices,
and putting pressure on other launch vendors to keep pace.

But my 20% per year guess is not based on any real data; I wish
I had some!

Arthur

Hmmm, somewhere I had heard a number of that order, but don't
recall where and I can't dig up a reference just now. It's possible
that number was including sales of satellite TV equipment, GPS-related
devices, etc. It definitely included satellite manufacture -
it was much more than just the launch market, anyway.

Arthur

On Fri, 25 Oct 2002, Al Globus wrote:

Actually 80 billion is closer to the truth. The best
indicator of how much money goes into each sector is
available in a report put out every year by the Office
of Space Commercialization, which exists within the
Department of Commerce. Their report, "Trends in
Space Commerce" can be found at
http://www.ta.doc.gov/space/library/reports/2001-06-trends.pdf

In 2001, $77.74 billion dollars went into the
commecial satellite industry. Now in all fairness you
need to break that number down some to really
understand where the money is. 31.5 billion of that
goes towards retail/subscription services (almost all
of which is tv), 10.32 billion is in transponder
leasing (most of which is tv and telephones), 19.25
billion is ground equipment and on 16.6 billion goes
into satellite manufacturing.

For comparison, only 7.04 billion went to the space
transportation segment in that same year. This is now
only the third largest segment in space, GPS related
spending surpassed it in 1998 and as of 2001, 8.42
billion was spent on it.

The fourth sector it follows is remote sensing, which
unfortunately has been slow to grow and has yet to
break the billion mark on spending. However, the US
gov is pushing this sector alot and given the current
political climate, this will soon be a viable
commercial sector in space, rivaling that of gps
within 10-yrs I believe.

Note that this report only includes the civil and
commercial sectors. To get an idea of government
spending, I would suggest going to fas.org and peruse
some of their data. Another good reference for
numbers is the COMSTAC report put out by the
Department of Transportation.

Getting back to the original question of what kind of
projections we can make within 10 years, I do not see
much in the commercial sector. Communications is
taking a pounding in today's market. Using the number
I have shown earlier, this makes up 70% of all
commercial space activities. Space transportation is
very closely aligned with this sector, though maybe
1-2 years behind it (thats how long it takes to build
a sat). To get a good view of how much this sector is
hurting, take a good look at the Alcatel, Loral and
Orbital's stock prices. Talk about painful!

According to most predictions (lehman brothers, boeing
and the carmel group for example), this sector will
not begin to heal until 2006, which in turn will
probably mean transportation will follow in 2007/8.

Given that, the important thing is how well will
existing companies fair during this environment? Out
of the big 5 commercial satellite manufacturers, life
is not looking so good. Boeing has already eliminated
its commercial division it acquired from Hughes into
its missile and defense business as it feels it cannot
stand on its own anymore. Loral is bleeding all over
the market and is due to be delisted next spring if
they cannot get back above a buck, alcatel is going
through significant layoffs in the commsat area, and
astrium is now forced into a massive restructuring.
Lockheed Martin is also beginning to distance itself
from the commsat field, most recently with its sale of
its commercial sat operators. It is harder to
seperate out the effects of commsat manufacturing
within lm since they do not seperate it from the
missiles and space division. However, their plant in
pennsylvania and sunnyvale california which handle
most of this work has been losing many of its
employees as they have been either laid off or
transfered to the government side.

Space transportation isn't doing much better. NASA
recently announced a delay in the SLI. Astrium cannot
seem to make money on the arianne (look at their reorg
to see more on this), orbital is laden with debt. LM
and Boeing are surviving primarily due to government
work (mostly defense). Russian companies are harder
to gauge, but as they are now teamed up with both
european and us companies to secure contracts, they
are suffering the same economic turmoil. However,
since their costs are less, they could come out of
this mess in 2006 in a fairly strong position,
assuming their economy as a whole survives in a decent
shape. I have not studied Russia's economic
indicators as much as Europe and US so I hesitate to
talk about them.

This may seem like a pessimistic view, but the
economic indicators support it. For the next 4-5
years, commercial space is in pain. As much as some
here dislike government involvement, we cannot as a
sector continue without their support. Fact of the
matter is, space is not profitable enough for the
commercial sector.

To show a complete picture, space sector cannot exist
with goverment only. The late 80s and early nineties,
defense spending shrank considerably and many
companies went under and were swallowed up. Those
that had a significate commercial presence were able
to survive and for the most part are still around (see
LM, Boeing, Loral, Orbital in the US; EADS, which owns
Astrium, and Alcatel in Europe).

Now there are more companies which I will not go into
(Ball, Spectrum Astro, Alenia, Mistubishi to name a
few), but the trends hold the same.

Anyhow, just thought I would post this to help put
things in context with today's market.

Ryan Z

Message: 18
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 23:58:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Arthur P. Smith"
Subject: Re: Re: 10-Year Plan

Hmmm, somewhere I had heard a number of that order,
but don't
recall where and I can't dig up a reference just now.
It's possible
that number was including sales of satellite TV
equipment, GPS-related
devices, etc. It definitely included satellite
manufacture -
it was much more than just the launch market, anyway.

Arthur

On Fri, 25 Oct 2002, Al Globus wrote:

>
> On Tuesday, October 22, 2002, at 05:33 PM, Arthur
P. Smith wrote:
>
> > Let's see, there's $50 billion in commercial space
activity devoted
> > to communications satellites.
>
> That sounds way high. Where did this figure come
from?
>
> The International Space Station (ISS) most important
legacy may be
> jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first
space tourist,
Dennis
> Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space
station. Under
> pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which
resulted in Mr.
Tito
> going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was old,
smelly, crowded and
> probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new,
shinny, much more
> roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing
accounts of how
> great space is. Would his experience have been as
good on Mir?
>
> Al Globus
> CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
> http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site

On Friday, October 25, 2002, at 05:23 PM, Ian Woollard wrote:

>>> I've seen
>>> figures that suggest that the true cost of launching a man, even with
>>> low tech expendables can be as low as $100,000 per person.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> You are probably thinking of the Russian tourist project that intends
>> to
>> launch 2 tourists at a time on a sub-orbital flight for $100,000
>> apiece.
>>
> No. I would not make that mistake. The solution to the problems of
> reducing launch costs is primarily that of minimising initial
> development costs and making a relatively low tech reusable system. The
> other big problem is maintaining very high reliability so you can
> actually use it for your chosen market.
>

Then where does the $100,000 figure come from and what's the
justification? I always get suspicious when I see the phrase 'true
cost.' Often (although not always) this means someone is finding some
reason to ignore 90% of the actual cost.

The dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid because they weren't
space-faring. It's almost as if Gaia then thought "Well, dinosaurs
worked pretty well, but space-faring is necessary. Maybe I'll should
try mammals this time." Humanity is now developing systems to detect and
deflect asteroids, and could build orbital space colonies to spread
beyond Earth to insure life would survive a planetary catastrophe.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

On Saturday, October 26, 2002, at 10:57 AM, Ryan Zelnio wrote:

> In 2001, $77.74 billion dollars went into the
> commecial satellite industry. Now in all fairness you
> need to break that number down some to really
> understand where the money is. 31.5 billion of that
> goes towards retail/subscription services (almost all
> of which is tv),

I forgot about satellite TV. There are dishes all over our neighborhood
and with continent-wide coverage satellite TV is bound to do very well
in the short, medium, and long term.

Space tourism could be our ticket to the stars. Save your pennies,
suborbital flights for $100,000 may start in 2005! See
http://www.spaceadventures.com/suborbital for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Ok, sea dragon would have put the cost down to about $500/kg. Weight of
a man in life support (i.e. someone in a space suit) = 200kg. Hence cost
is $100,000 per person. And (but) that's an expendable.

Actually you'd need to launch a bit more mass than that for recovery
back to the earth, but then again the $500/kg is perhaps on the high
side- they were quoting between $60 and $600/kg as the likely price for
Sea Launch.

But that's just an example, I'm actually looking at achieving more like
$500/kg with a reusable vehicle.

Al Globus wrote:

On Friday, October 25, 2002, at 08:55 PM, Arthur P. Smith wrote:

> If other numbers that have been bandied about are correct, some
> of the Russian launch costs may actually be as low as $300/lb,

Most of the cost of launch is paying engineers and technicians. Really
good Russian engineers and technicians can be hired for a song today.
While this is great for launch costs in the near term, it's probably not
sustainable. Eventually, either Russian wages will rise or the
technical talent will disappear.

The International Space Station (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr. Tito
going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was old, smelly, crowded and
probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shinny, much more
roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts of how
great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html