economics of bootstrapping (was New Book on Space Colonies)

>
> There are other markets out there that people like to
> dream of, but right now there really is only three
> solid markets. (remote sensing may become one in the
> future but right now, they survive mostly to serve the
> whims of the defense sector)

Remote sensing is one of the things Pat Bahn (of TGV Rockets) is
promoting as a service for suborbital spaceflight. I think that there's
real potential there, but it's far from mature.

> Of these three, science is the least of these in terms
> of bootstrap potential. There simply is not enough
> impetus out there to push the political cogs to
> justify bootstrapping.

Yep. No way is science going to drive things forward. Science can serve
the opening of the frontier, but it's not going to drive it.

[...]
> The current administration of
the US is pushing for a missile defense shield,
> largely based in space.

The recent APS boost phase missile defense study cited the need for a
factor of ten increase in launches in order to provide enough
satellites to ensure global coverage. The authors thought this was a
bug, but they're wrong - it's a feature.

[...]
> The comsat market however is more driven by economics.
> The capital that this sector can muster was shown in
> the attempts in the late 90s to build huge LEO
> constellations. While the LEO ventures proved to not
> be profitable yet, it does illustrate that there are
> companies that are willing AND CAPABLE of putting
> together billions of dollars to put in an
> infrastructure in space.

My concern is that the mobile phone market that Iridium was intended to
service has now been taken over by cell phones. There's still plenty of
potential in the third world, but North America and Europe have almost
complete coverage. If the third world is able to drive demand there's
hope for Iridium II. The idea isn't nuts since already satellite phones
are in use for communication in rural areas in Africa, and the huge
numbers of people mean that only a very small proportion have to adopt
the phones in order for the service to make money.

......Andrew