Stretching the Friendship? (Was: How Small Is...)

> development than all the space tourism hype put together. The key thing we
> need to change to make space development possible is the reduction of our
> technology costs (launch costs, despite the hype, can be double-scissored
> around;

What does double-scissored mean?
btw If launch costs come down, so will tech costs, both because you can
risk failure more easily, and because you can add (heavy) redundancy
and backups.

> which is why all of the fantasies about re-usable launchers failed
> to find viable financing & the X Prize has degenerated into irrelevancy) by
> a mixture of simplification, miniaturisation & alternative organisation.

Launcher startups have failed to get funding because the market risk
is way too high, and venture capitalists aren't morons :-)
The X-prize has stimulated a lot of creativity and alternative approaches.
It's *way* too early to call it irrelevant. If nothing has happened in
ten years I'll concede the point.

As to simplification etc... This is IMO a major part of the solution,
not just to the various issues related to probes, but launchers too.
Alternative organization is also really critical: the way people have
been thinking about space has been mirrored in ineffective organizational
structures. IMO the obstacles to creating a truly spacefaring civilization
are as much psychological as anything else.

......Andrew

Andrew Case
acase@... |