Digest Number 377

>
> Hello
>
> I think I am agreeing with the others. We should devote the major
> part of our space effort to developing a a true, commercially usable
> lift system for passengers and cargo.
>
> Until there is the equivalent of a DC-3, or 707 (pick your own
> metaphor) used by the equivalent of United Airlines, or FEDEX, the
> rest remains a dream subject to the whims of politics.

The problem with this argument is that you aren't going to get cheap (or
more accurately, cheaper: using mass produced Russian boosters such as
Proton would take a lot of cost pressures off the space developmental
situation if ITAR & related regulations weren't always in the way) boost
technologies if you don't have a market which would actually be advantaged
by the cost cutting. Space tourism is not a market, despite the press
releases; & while space science is, this market is almost exclusively at the
governmental level, where the interest is always securety of asset over
cost.

(... & before you read this as a silly public/private enterprise dichotomy,
industrial business - or at least the successful ones - view things the same
way; which is why risky price-cutters like Rotory & Pioneer couldn't find
real investors to back their projects)

Given that there has been no economically rational analysis of spacemining
(hardly surprising, given the advocates of such schemes are usually
scientists & economists), coming up with human missions beyond LEO which
rely heavily on off-the-shelf technology (as any asteroid mission would;
somewhat unlike the lunar option & very unlike any Mars alternative) might
be best choice we have for providing that market; especially if the concept
can be simplified to the point where a certain mass producability becomes
feasible.

Live in peace
Robert.Clements@...
endeavour2 project http://www.geocities.com/robtclements/endeavour2.html>