Tourism

> I see what you are saying but do you really believe there are enough people
> with that kind of money?

There have been studies conducted that show the demand is there. There
is a little bit of a chicken & egg problem as far as getting the costs
low enough for a substantial number of people to go, but there are
already multiple existence proofs of people willing to spend $20 million
to go to ISS for a week (at least 5 confirmed, as in already gone or
have paid the deposit). So anyway, it looks like there is demand enough
to generate at least some revenue. There is also an established market
for suborbital tourism in the form of flights in a MiG (I forget the
#), so expanding the anvelope should increase the pool of people
interested.

> If there is enough then do it, and I will concede your point. Or are you
> talking about tourism after a cheap means to orbit is available?

There is already sufficient demand at current prices to support a
mini-station. Note that the incremental flight cost of a soyuz is
under $20 million, so the tourists are paying for the whole flight,
including the 2 cosmonauts in the other seats. This doesn't cover
amortization of development costs, or fixed costs, though. The
existence proof may help with getting money for development of
a new launcher, but that's still a lot of money, and the big players
in the launch services industry are still thinking of launchers as
munitions, which is an obstacle to both safety and cheapness. IMO
the course that is most likely to lead to dramatic launch cost reduction
is starting out with crewed suborbital rockets, tapping the lower
end of the tourism market, and then gradually expanding the envelope
to orbit.

Anyway, I think that there is a possibility that the Russians may
make some progress in reducing their costs still further, but in the
end of the day somebody is going to have to build a new launcher.
The demonstrated existence of a market for tourism will hopefully
shape the design of the launcher into being more like an airplane
(from the standpoint of operations) than like a missile, which is
what is needed in order to get the costs down. Once we have costs
down a bit more, and a body of people with direct experience of
spaceflight and *money* it may get a lot easier to raise funds for
the kind of visionary schemes this list is all about - SPS, lunar
and asteroidal mining, and all that.

......Andrew

Andrew Case
acase@... |