Mike Combs wrote: > OK. But if a mass-driver launched sufficient
mass to build 5 Island 3's over its operational lifetime, that would
be around 5 billion tons. How many individual kilogram launches would
that be? If we amortized construction & infrastructure costs, how
finely-divided would those costs wind up being?
infrastructure launch costs involved in setting up the mass drivers
.... There's been a recurring nightmare in space exploration where
large fortunes have been spent in developing technology to the point
where you no longer have any money left to fly the actual mission....
The two of you have hit on the fundamental dilemma: average cost vs.
marginal cost. (Personally, I don't think people should graduate from
high school not understanding the distinction, but the pitiful state
of education is a whole other topic.) For mature industries with
large markets, the answer is almost always going to be to reduce
marginal costs (e.g., the music industry with CDs). But for fledgling
industries, finding the right balance of improving capital to push
marginal costs down is very tricky.
For the Moon specifically, since no suitable propellant is found on
the moon, a propellantless techology (i.e., mass drivers or thethers)
will eventually be most successful, if mass launched increases
continually. But we don't have that assurance that launches from the
Moon will increase.
By the same token, most of these alternate propulsion ideas for
Earth-to-orbit are tackling the wrong problem. The cost of hydrogen
and oxygen is basically just the cost of electrolysis and
liquification. I've read conflicting analyses of what that cost is,
but I think in every case, the cost of LH/LOx fuel was less than
$10/kg payload to LEO. The rest of the tremendous Shuttle launch
costs are for employing a veritable army of technicians and for
amortizing the large capital costs. (I forget the exact figure, but
I've read that if the airlines were run the way NASA runs the shuttle,
the cost of a trip from New York to Los Angeles would be something
like $100,000 to $1 million.)
++JohnWheeler
For the Moon specifically, since no suitable propellant is found on
the moon, a propellantless techology (i.e., mass drivers or thethers)
will eventually be most successful, if mass launched increases
continually. But we don't have that assurance that launches from the
Moon will increase. You're making lots of sense here. Whenever I mention lunar mass drivers, or use of lunar resources in HEO, it's always in the context of a massive SPS construction program,and/or orbital habitatprogram. In those cases, launches from the moon will increase. But I'll be the first to agree that use of lunar ores makes little sense in any operation much smaller than this. For example, I had an exchange with one fellow who was proposing a moonbase, lunar mine, and mass driver for construction of large GEO communication satellites. I told him that the tonnage needed in GEO was much too small to justify such an investment. On the other hand, I spoke to another fellow who insisted that Island One should be built from Earth launched components, as he felt the undeniably cheaper resource extraction and component manufacturing available on Earth would outweigh the lift costs savings of the lunar option. I feel that the truth lies somewhere between these two extreme opposite viewpoints.
Mike Combs
I'm not sure what you mean by "these alternate propulsion ideas for
Earth-to-orbit". If by that term you mean SSTO or TSTO, then I would say
that the serious ideas I've seen for SSTO/TSTO do not propose LOX/LH2
because of propellant cost considerations. Rather, they propose LOX/LH2
because it is the highest specific impulse chemical propellant combination
that is non-toxic and for which engine technology is well-established.
Delta-V depends only on mass fraction and specific impulse, and LOX/LH2
produces high specific impulse.
component of space launch costs today.
This contrasts with the commercial airline situation for which the
fluctuating cost of jet fuel can ideed have significant economic impact.
But any particular fleet of commercial airliner (e.g., 777) sustains more
flights in a month than all the rocket flights in history combined, so the
initial capital outlay ($6 billion for the 777, I think) get amortized over
a large number of planes and operations, allowing the cost of propellant to
become more important economically than it is in the space launch industry.
The Space Shuttle fleet has flown to orbit less than 110 times. Take any
four or five 777 airliners, and they will fly more than 110 times in a
month.
Ron Menich
"John
04/09/01
11:33 AM
Please
respond to
ssi_list
...
By the same token, most of these alternate propulsion ideas for
Earth-to-orbit are tackling the wrong problem. The cost of hydrogen
and oxygen is basically just the cost of electrolysis and
liquification. I've read conflicting analyses of what that cost is,
but I think in every case, the cost of LH/LOx fuel was less than
$10/kg payload to LEO. The rest of the tremendous Shuttle launch
costs are for employing a veritable army of technicians and for
amortizing the large capital costs. (I forget the exact figure, but
I've read that if the airlines were run the way NASA runs the shuttle,
the cost of a trip from New York to Los Angeles would be something
like $100,000 to $1 million.)
++JohnWheeler
If what you say is correct, then this is most depressing, because it
implies that there is essentially no way a private entity could ever
justify using extra-terrestrial resources.
"Combs, Mike"
ssi_list@... ssi_list@...
04/09/01
11:47 AM
Please
respond to
ssi_list
...Whenever I mention lunar mass drivers, or use of lunar resources in HEO,
it's always in the context of a massive SPS construction program, and/or
orbital habitat program. In those cases, launches from the moon will
increase. But I'll be the first to agree that use of lunar ores makes
little sense in any operation much smaller than this.
...
Regards,
Mike Combs
If what you say is correct, then this is most depressing, because it
implies that there is essentially no way a private entity could ever
justify using extra-terrestrial resources.
it's always in the context of a massive SPS construction program, and/or
orbital habitat program. In those cases, launches from the moon will
increase. But I'll be the first to agree that use of lunar ores makes
little sense in any operation much smaller than this.
Mike Combs
Regards,
Mike Combs
In a message dated 4/9/01 11:37:56 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
jdw27_42@... writes:
the moon, a propellantless techology (i.e., mass drivers or thethers)
will eventually be most successful, if mass launched increases
continually. But we don't have that assurance that launches from the
Moon will increase.
>>
Oxygen makes a suitable propellant, all you need is a suitable energy source
such as nuclear energy to heat the oxygen and you could have a nuclear
powered oxygen rocket to propell a surface to orbit lunar shuttle. Also what
propellent does the Shuttle Solid Rocket boosters use? Isn't it aluminum
powder and oxygen or something like that? Couldn't these materials be found
on the Moon?
Tom Kalbfus
Is there any historical precedent for a company or consortium of companies
working together on a commercial project of this massive scale?
"Combs, Mike"
ssi_list@... ssi_list@...
04/09/01
02:16 PM
Please
respond to
ssi_list
You seem to be saying that you consider a mass SPS construction program or
orbital habitat program to be forever beyond the reach of private
enterprise. I certainly don't believe this.
I'd confess that a consortium of many corporations may be more likely than
a single corporation going it all alone. More likely, the job will be
broken up into many small parts that single corporations will take on.
If what you say is correct, then this is most depressing, because it
implies that there is essentially no way a private entity could ever
justify using extra-terrestrial resources.
...Whenever I mention lunar mass drivers, or use of lunar resources in
HEO,
it's always in the context of a massive SPS construction program, and/or
orbital habitat program. In those cases, launches from the moon will
increase. But I'll be the first to agree that use of lunar ores makes
little sense in any operation much smaller than this.
Mike Combs
Regards,
Mike Combs
>
> Is there any historical precedent for a company or consortium of companies
> working together on a commercial project of this massive scale?
>
> Ron Menich
few billion dollars all the time:
- Intel sinks several billion dollars into each new chip fabrication
facility
- General Motors has at least a few times spent $1.5-2 billion creating
a major new manufacturing facility
- Cable-laying companies invest in trans-ocean cables at $0.5-1 billion
per cable
- New Gigawatt-scale electric power plants can come in at prices of $10
billion
- Some massive oil-drilling platforms cost more than $1 billion a pop
In each of these cases the companies and their investors (and bankers)
have experience and can be confident the risks to their investment are
relatively small. I'm not aware of companies investing billions in more
risky propositions that haven't been proved by themselves or others
before on a smaller scale.
Arthur (apsmith@...
O'Neill felt that he could bring the initial investment down to Alaska Oil Pipeline magnitudes, and I believe that serves as such an example.
Mike Combs
Is there any historical precedent for a company or consortium of companies
working together on a commercial project of this massive scale?
In each of these cases the companies and their investors (and bankers)
have experience and can be confident the risks to their investment are
relatively small. I'm not aware of companies investing billions in more
risky propositions that haven't been proved by themselves or others
before on a smaller scale.
Aye, there's the rub. I'm beginning to feel more and more that much can be said for a government-funded proof-of-concept prototype SPS. Perhapseven in an era where SPS can't yet meet or beat the price of electricity fromfossil fuels.
Regards,
On that topic, last week, I talked to Maria Cantwells energy policy
person... She is a new state senator for washington state, and sits on the
energy board, and she also sits on the energy research board. Her policy
person had NEVER EVEN HEARD of a solar power satelite.
go thru the process of educating the enery policy assistant of the
politician in question on solar power satelites, and raise the conciousness
level that a demonstrator project needs to be done.
Lets also tell them to have DOE or even NREL do it instead of Nasa... (NREL
is the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, they do long term tests for
new energy technologies... they are the perfect spot for such a program.)
So, who wants to write the synopsis, and cite all the background
materials... I can come up with a list of the members of the energy
research committe of congress if needed so that we know who to lobby....
John.
In each of these cases the companies and their investors (and bankers)
have experience and can be confident the risks to their investment are
relatively small. I'm not aware of companies investing billions in more
risky propositions that haven't been proved by themselves or others
before on a smaller scale.
Aye, there's the rub. I'm beginning to feel more and more that much can
be said for a government-funded proof-of-concept prototype SPS.
Perhapseven in an era where SPS can't yet meet or beat the price of
electricity fromfossil fuels.
Regards,
Mike Combs
[IMAGE]
[IMAGE]
www.
[IMAGE]
>>> Is there any historical precedent for large scale commercial
cooperation.......
upwards of a billion or so dollars... these are private enterprises...
And, while there is one contractor that takes responsibility for the "job",
they hire hundereds of smaller subcontractors... (in fact, it can be
tiered... The general hires the electrical sub who hires yet another sub
that is to wire the cable to the tv's, who hires one sub for the west wing,
and that sub hires a small independant crew for 1/2 of the floors cause
it's too big for his crew to handle alone...... and on and on and on...)
And, naturally if you want large companies working together examples...
there are government/commercial projects like the chunnel... Private
funds, but government had to LICENCE the construction.
And, yes, again, lots of hotels have been built throughout history, and
lots of tunnels have been built throughout history. The problem as I see
it is one of funding smaller trial projects to prove technology to get
interest levels high enough for investors to bite. We aren't doing any
trial projects at present.
I can think of a number of trial projects... I'm sure that anyone on this
list can as well... SMALL projects that start to use the local materials
on the moon to make little nothings... (hopefully the little nothings can
be usefull to a future project, right?) in some kind of on-going way...
It's a proof that something can be made...
But the problem is getting even a small mission funded.. Look at Spacedev
LLC, they can't even get funded to send a rover to the moon, and one of
thier big problems was not having a written contract with DSN (which is
rapidly getting overloaded with useage requests...), I think there was some
government hoo rah about it... Actually if you want a small start-up
venture to start with limited cash, and make some money in the space biz...
The Seattle NSS chapter has a person proposing a low cost way to build an
antenna farm suitable for use as part of the DSN which could have time on
it sold to a large number of differenet organizations around the world that
are all presently fighting for dsn time.... Cash stream coming in, use
that money to seed other things... His proposal is basically to use a lot
of smaller dishes arrayed together to provide the reception area needed to
equate to one of the functionally larger (100 meter?) dishes that are used
by dsn... The problems to solve are engeneering based... that of signal
timing... How do you in a processing manner handle a couple of hundered
signals that are all identical coming in over a wire when all of the wires
to the different dishes are different lengths so that these identical
signals actually arrive at different times... How do you combine them
coherently...
In any case, I'm rambling at this point.
John.
Is there any historical precedent for a company or consortium of companies
working together on a commercial project of this massive scale?
Ron Menich
"Combs, Mike"
"'ssi_list@... ssi_list@...
Economics (was Re: Critical time)
04/09/01
02:16 PM
Please
respond to
ssi_list
You seem to be saying that you consider a mass SPS construction program or
orbital habitat program to be forever beyond the reach of private
enterprise. I certainly don't believe this.
I'd confess that a consortium of many corporations may be more likely than
a single corporation going it all alone. More likely, the job will be
broken up into many small parts that single corporations will take on.
If what you say is correct, then this is most depressing, because it
implies that there is essentially no way a private entity could ever
justify using extra-terrestrial resources.
...Whenever I mention lunar mass drivers, or use of lunar resources in
HEO,
it's always in the context of a massive SPS construction program, and/or
orbital habitat program. In those cases, launches from the moon will
increase. But I'll be the first to agree that use of lunar ores makes
little sense in any operation much smaller than this.
Mike Combs
Regards,
Mike Combs
Paid Net2phone Advertisement - Click Here!
Paid Net2phone Advertisement - Click Here!
[IMAGE]
<<
>>> Is there any historical precedent for large scale commercial
cooperation.......
The Gulf States in the middle East is a hive of avtivity, mostly contractors from every developed country on the planet. All working collaboratively to
get the job done.
> In a message dated Mon, 9 Apr 2001 6:02:42 PM Eastern Daylight
Time, john_schlick@... writes:
>
><<
> >>> Is there any historical precedent for large scale commercial
> cooperation.......
> ============================
>
> The Petroleum industry.
>
> The Gulf States in the middle East is a hive of avtivity, mostly
contractors from every developed country on the planet. All working
collaboratively to
> get the job done.
large proportion of the western population drives an engine powered
by gasoline... i can assure you that the petroleum industry wasn't
created from scratch using gigabuck private investment (gasoline was
originally just a by product of heating oil drilling). Same is true
of the egs chosen previously; with the very disturbing exception of
Iridium & its space telephony colleagues, all of whom assembled vast
multinational consortia to create large scale space businesses... &
dropped every cent they spent. Designing plausible space business
models isn't a case of deciding what you'd like to build & then work
out how to sell it... it's finding out what the market wants & then
deciding how best to service it.
If that market is meant to be consumerist, i can see no feasible
mechanism whereby large scale space development can take place in
either the near or medium term... that means you need to convince
multinational groupings - individual nations won't cut it, no matter
how big they are - that this is worth doing. Public service reasoning
- the powersat angle, say - is interesting; but it runs up against
some surprising barriers.
To begin with, we definitely need better electricity storage
technology to replace the gasoline driven infernal combustion engine
with mass electric transportation; & until we cross over to that
point - or the price of petrol in key markets (particularly
USAmerica) is held at true cost rather than artificially deflated for
political gain - the market for large numbers of expensive powersats
(& for cost effectivity we WILL need a large number of these units)
will be nonexistant... most of the current power shortages in some
parts of the western world are due to inefficient use of power rather
than real shortage, after all.
It will always be cheaper to use Earth generated power more
efficiently than to create space based power; so until you're running
all cars on safe hydrogen cells....
Robert.
>>>Oxygen makes a suitable propellant, all you need is a suitable energy source
such as nuclear energy to heat the oxygen and you could have a nuclear
powered oxygen rocket to propell a surface to orbit lunar shuttle. Also what
propellent does the Shuttle Solid Rocket boosters use? Isn't it aluminum
powder and oxygen or something like that? Couldn't these materials be found
on the Moon?>>>
aluminium fuels on the moon, has been explored in the past. Due to the problems
of pumping powdered Aluminium, molten aluminium may be used instead. Since
Aluminium melts at 600C, a thermic lance could be used to melt it, prior to take
off. Alternatively, the craft could carry an RTG in its fuel tank. This would
provide the necesary heat to keep the Al molten. A similar idea would be a
Sodium/Potassium eutectic alloy fuel system. NaK is molten at room temperature
and it could potentialy be burned with oxygen in a rocket engine. A slurry,
containing fine granuals of powdered Aluminium, would have superior performance
to a pure NaK fuel.
Sulphur/Oxygen is another potential fuel choice. Samples taken by apollo
astronauts show relatively high concentrations of sulphur in some lunar soils.
Sulphur dioxide would freeze out during the lunar night and would tend to
collect in cold traps. It is therefor an environmentaly more friendly fuel and
unlike carbon based fuels, it will not leave the moon with a perminent CO2
atmosphere.
Oxygen is extremely corrosive at high temperatures. Any nuclear engine system
using oxygen propellant, would need to be constructed from ceramic materials.
The thermal conductivity of ceramics is poor.
In my opinion, one of the most limiting factors for nuclear engines, is their
low power to weight ratio. When large amounts of thrust are required, the
specific impulse delivered tends to be very poor. For this reason, nuclear
engines may be more suitable for space transportation systems. During taakeoff
from a planetary surface, large amounts of power are needed.
Tony
Learn how to build a profitable business
on the internet.
http://www.sixfigureincome.com/?854665
So, who wants to write the synopsis, and cite all the background
materials... I can come up with a list of the members of the energy
research committe of congress if needed so that we know who to lobby.... You might want to contact the Space Frontier Foundation (http://www.space-frontier.org/). Margo Deckard is heading up a Space Solar Power outreach program.
Mike Combs
I just read today that Canadarm, the robotic arm that will be attached to
ISS Alpha, cost a billion dollars. The US Destiny module cost $1.4
billion. Hubble cost a couple of billion, plus ongoing maintenance costs.
Cassini was a couple of billion.
asteroidal materials. An SPS constructed from lunar or asteroidal
materials would be an order or magnitude or two more expensive than that.
Ron Menich
john_schlick@...
PM
Please respond
to ssi_list
>>> Is there any historical precedent for large scale commercial
cooperation.......
Some exotic tropical high end resorts, or themed casinoes in Las Vegas cost
upwards of a billion or so dollars... these are private enterprises...
...
The problem with these total costs is that we need detailed cost
breakdowns in order to attack the component that is most costly or
for which we could get the most RTI (return on investment). I am
not surprised that these costs are so high because of my limited
experience in the way these projects are run. But without a detailed
breakdown I am just making assumptions. It would be great to have
a detailed breakdown of a number of government and commercial projects
for comparison.
mejames@...
http://www.InnerTransit.net (Email distribution for multilevel organizations)
http://www.InnerTransit.org (Homebase for collaborative engineering)
>I just read today that Canadarm, the robotic arm that will be attached
to
>ISS Alpha, cost a billion dollars. The US Destiny module cost $1.4
>billion. Hubble cost a couple of billion, plus ongoing maintenance
costs.
>Cassini was a couple of billion.
>
>One or two billion dollars will not suffice to build an SPS from
lunar or
>asteroidal materials. An SPS constructed from lunar or asteroidal
>materials would be an order or magnitude or two more expensive than
that.