What can we do?

>
> >Difficult ? Yes. Impossible ? No.
>
> Ok. If not impossible, then why hasn't it occurred? What is "industry"
> waiting for?
>

It is already happening. Space communications has been
profitable for over 40 years, for example.

> >Space communications and Space Tourism make a profits even at these lift
> >rates.
>
> Space Tourism isn't making any profit.
>

Incorrect.

> > > These days everyone seems to think tourism will solve the problem. I think
> > > that's preposterous, but that's a can of worms I see no value in opening.
> > > Believe as you will, I don't see it happening.
> > >
> >What is your basis ?
>
> Common sense.
>

???

> >Given the fact that it is already
> >profitable. It is simply a matter of how fast the market
> >will expand.
>
> Already profitable? I disagree. Both tourists (there have only been two in
> America - there was also a Russian woman who responded to a radio
> "contest"/advertisement and a Japanese reporter who hated his experience -

Non, wrong. The "Russian woman" you are thinking of was
British, her names is Helen Sharman. And she was not a tourist
at all. When her corporate sponsors fell through the
cost of her flight was paid by a Russian bank.

> both went to MIR) paid US $20M to take one seat on the shuttle and go to
> the ISS. $40M doesn't even come close to profitability. How much did each

The $20 M is a lot mroe than the cost of flying the Soyuz
mission. Hence it made a profit.

That's it.

The ISS time is an interesting question. At one point NASA
saidf they would charge the Russians for the ISS time.
But that seems to have been an idle threat from Dan Goldin.

Now that Dan is gone, NASA seems happy to accept the visitors for free.

Of course your argument is about the cost of the Space Station
time. Well, we do not actually need any ISS time at all,
you can fly on a Soyuz and return without visiting ISS,
but it would be a short uncomfortable trip.

The ISS represents "free" infrastructue for now.

It will be interesting to see if NASA can ever figure
out the delta cost of having an extra visitor on board.

Could an entire space station be paid for by fee paying
passengers ? Quite possibly. Not today perhaps, but
"real soon now" :-)

> shuttle launch cost? How much did it cost for the shuttle to be readied
> between flights? How much did the ISS cost? Etc, etc. Not even close to
> demonstrating profitability. Merely a theory extrapolated from Earth-based
> adventure tourism.
>

No Shuttle cost was associated with the two toursit missions.

> And just how fast would the market have to expand, anyway? At $20M per
> person, per flight, it certainly wouldn't expand very fast would it?
>

Well that depends on your defintion of fast.

For the first forty years of space flight there were no toursts
at all. Then in the last two years we have had two.
That represents a pretty dramatic expansion if you look
at it that way.

If enough customers showed up the Russians could easily fly
a dozen Soyuz missiosn a year, maybe more. By building more launch
pads and increasing their mass production throughput there is
no limit. The limitation become the number of docking
ports on the ISS. With one week crew rotations and two toursits
per flight on a single docking port, that would be about a hundred toursits per year.

>
> I agree. You might (heavy emphasis on might) get venture capitalists to
> invest. That doesn't automatically translate into the bootstrapping most
> proponents of space tourism contend.
>

You lost me.

> Services? For what? There's nothing there but a poorly planned, poorly
> deployed, over-priced space station (that would take eons to pay for via
> tourist industry), a bunch of debris, and satellites, mostly
> communications. What service do you believe will open up the high frontier?
>

Tourism for one. ISS has been paid for, the delta cost of
sending tourists is so small that so far NASA has been
unable to calculate it.

ISS was not designed for tourism.

A simple tin can space station would be cheap. There are
spare parts from Mir that could be used to put one
together and launch it fairly cheaply, say $200 million.

> If you've read my MUOL posts, you know my answer to that question. Yes,
> there are services that have the potential to open up the frontier. And
> yes, services supporting a tourist industry can help. But it is not all
> that. Manufacturing, in my opinion, has the greatest potential. Compare the
> contributions to earth-based economies of manufacturing industries to
> tourist industries and you'll see what I mean.
>

Possibly. But so far there is no data to base a busines plan.

For space tourism I can give the VC's all the numbers they need.

> >At this point I think your best bet is to work with governments and
> >academia on a pure
> >research program. You do not seem to have the kind of
> >hard financial data that commercial investors demand.
>
> Baa, humbug! Translation: I disagree.
>

Good luck :-)

A serious suggestion for you, go talk to your local office
of SCORE (Service Corp of Retired Executives). They will
be happy to help you write a business plan for free, and
they will tell you precisely the numbers you need to put in.
They are a free service, funded by the US Small Business Administration.

> So, you're saying tourism will bootstrap space industry using existing
> launch systems (US space shuttle) and existing technologies? Please explain
> how tourism can be anything more than a footnote in the early history of
> space exploration using the US space shuttle.
>

Where did I mention the Space Shuttle ?
You can ground the fleet so far as I am concerned and it
would not hurt space development one bit.

The Shuttle is completely irrelevant, we can do it all
much more cheaply with Russian hardware.

Cheers,

Charles R.