Digest Number 378

>
> I agree with Andrew. To push the argument a little more.
> Have you ever
> been to Las Vegas? The fastest growing city in the USA. One
> could argue it
> is built to over-indulge the rich. I am sure there are other
> cities on
> Earth which would fit into the same mold. Why not have some
> on low orbit
> and others on the Moon. What ever the market justifies,
> maybe even on Mars,
> though I don't see how that could work. But I could have foreseen Las
> Vegas?
> Sincerely, Jay Huebner

Let's keep to the point here: were you in Vegas in the 30s & 40s, which is
when the business you see as an easy fix was developed? For that matter:
have you been to Atlantic City, which tried to clone the mature Vegas
approach with little success? Vegas worked because it started as a
relatively simple idea which could be implemented cheaply; & each stage of
the city's expansion was co-financed (with the proceeds of organised crime
built up during Prohibition, of course) by the take on the previous
incarnation of the city. That does not apply to the nonsense which is
generally passed off as space tourism.

The only really cheap fix stage which canuld be exploited - the Vomet
Comet/Vometski Cometski level of parabolic flight - has proved unmarketable;
& despite the press releases, Russian flights with non-scientific passengers
have been few & far between. Why? The Russians want people to actually pay
for their flights; & despite what people might prat to market researchers
carefully trying to steer answers in the right direction - can't you tell i
used to work in the business? - they aren't prepared to write cheques
(particularly in a business environment when catastrophic insurance is
becoming extravagantly expensive for adventure activities). The kid from
MirCorp doesn't want to pay for his flight (his flight is conditional on a
TV deal in what is known in the trade as "development hell", which is why he
has never officially asked the Russians for a seat); which is why he was
never going to fly, no matter what press releases MirCorp released....

Financiers can see this; & know that can't build a real space (ie,
non-parasitical) tourism technology without people who will actually pay for
their flights & not merely promised to do so in an unscientific survey. A
small market of millionaires actually willing to pay money might pay for an
evolutionary technology (probably based on a man-rated Proton) capable of
stretching the window a bit (a 6- to 10-seater Soyuz derivative at
Proton-class prices would be nice); but you'd need a real queue of real
people with real assets to pay for a real revolutionary technology.

There's another issue which needs to be confronted here. It seems likely
that both Titov & Shuttleworth claimed at least some of their fees back from
tax-payers as promotional expenditure. It's one thing to argue that people
have the right to spend their own money any way ther see fit; another thing
entirely to require that tax-payers (who may already have paid for the
development of the technology) may another co-payment for the flight....

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