So what ARE habitats good for anyway?

From: Tom Tucker (Olympia) [mailto:tntucker@...]

Without a dramatic drop in cost to orbit, and a dramatic rise in the cost of
fossil fuels, SPS will remain uneconomical.

Both could be in our future. Although I would say that use of space
resources is a way around the high costs of launching things up from Earth.
But, yeah, at least a 10-fold reduction in launch costs would be nice before
we even wanted to get started.

Some say that we don't need space resources, we just need lower launch
costs. To me, it would take something like a 1,000-fold reduction in launch
costs before space resource use became unattractive. I suspect we will live
in that era between 10-fold and 1,000-fold lift cost reductions for quite
some while

I think that we will need to see a breakthrough in the cost of achieving
orbit that then leads to a huge demand for tourists to travel to LEO as well
as to the vicinity of the moon. Once that is possible, they won't want to
go home and so space hotels will be in demand, especially if 1G environment
can be provided. Once people can sit around a restaurant or bar in space
discussing ideas, mining of asteroids can't be far behind.

Yes, I definitely should not dismiss the possibility of tourism being a
major driver of this process.

Rgds,
Mike Combs

From:
Tom Tucker (Olympia) [mailto:tntucker@...]

Without a dramatic drop in cost to orbit, and a dramatic rise in the cost of fossil fuels, SPS will remain uneconomical.

Both could be in our future. Although I would say that use of space resources is a way around the high costs of launching things up from Earth. But, yeah, at least a 10-fold reduction in launch costs would be nice before we even wanted to get started.

Some say that we don't need space resources, we just need lower launch costs. To me, it would take something like a 1,000-fold reduction in launch costs before space resource use became unattractive. I suspect we will live in that era between 10-fold and 1,000-fold lift cost reductions for quite some while

I think that we will need to see a breakthrough in the cost of achieving orbit that then leads to a huge demand for tourists to travel to LEO as well as to the vicinity of the moon. Once that is possible, they won't want to go home and so space hotels will be in demand, especially if 1G environment can be provided. Once people can sit around a restaurant or bar in space discussing ideas, mining of asteroids can't be far behind.

Yes, I definitely should not dismiss the possibility of tourism being a major driver of this process.

Rgds,
Mike Combs