Markets

Ian,

You are mixing up present and future markets, and your
points are lost in obscurity.

Let me try to unravel it for you.

>
> But the GEO comms market isn't the only part of the possible
>
> launch market is it? It's not even the biggest part of the potential
>
> launch market.
>

GEO comsats are the biggest part of the present commercial market.

Is the military/intelligence market larger than commercial commsats today ? Not sure, probably yes.

As for the POTENTIAL market, well that is a different matter. Potential markets are NEW markets.

>
> There's LEO comms sats, weather sats, spy sats,

OK, those are PRESENT markets, but how much expansion potential do they really have ? Enough to get us
to the high frontier ? I doubt it.

> tourism; people who
> want to live in space, people who want to travel to Mars, people
> who want to live in the asteroid belt, microwave power satellites
> etc. etc.
>

All those things are POTENTIAL future markets, and so none of them are real; and the prospects right now do not look good for any of them, for the reasons previously discussed. Mostly governmental and political obstacles.

Mars is just plain too expensive, all the billionaires in the world do not have enough disposal income to make it happen, even if they wanted to. And all the Mars fans who go to scifi conventions do not have enoguh money, not even close.

Cheers,

Charles R.