economics of bootstrapping (was New Book on Space Colonies)

>
> >not claiming that hte market here is huge but it is
> >significant. Look at how much we spent sending up
> the
> >shuttle to fix satellites, this has been done
> multiple
> >times. Just look at the last few years [...]
> >
> I think this is perhaps even more important than it
> seems. Why are
> satellites so often one-offs and hideously
> expensive? Because they have
> to be designed to operate for years or decades
> without upgrades or
> repairs, working entirely automatically. Our
> computer and robotics
> skills are better than they used to be, but this is
> still exceedingly
> difficult. Can even a modern million-dollar computer
> server function
> properly as long as a satellite has to without any
> direct human
> intervention?
>
Thanx for your agreement. I really enjoy you analogy
with servers and I hope you will not be offended if i
refer to it in some possible future posts.

> The more I think about it, the more frustrated I am
> that people don't
> take SPS more seriously. All of us should be writing
> every politician,
> bureaucrat, newspaper, etc. we can think of, because
> it's such a HUGE
> win for the world if we can make this happen. It
> just boggles the mind
> that we haven't been investing in it. I mean,
> billions have been spent
> on nuclear fusion with little to show; hundreds of
> billions have been
> spent by the US government on nuclear fission (both
> for weapons and
> subsidies to power plants - yeah, that's why they
> built so many in the
> 60's and 70's and none since - it's not cost
> effective without subsidy,
> and they want to bring the subsidies back!) and we
> still have a
> many-hundred-billion dollar problem of nuclear waste
> on our hands.
>
i agree that this is mind boggling if all we are doing
is looking it from a technical perspective. As a
space cadet, I fully 100% endorse SPS. But as a
student of politics I just don't see it happening with
a crisis trigger point. I cannot stress this point.
If you really want to understand what is needed to
push the political wills into supporting something of
this scale, you really need to look at what drives the
government to back space or large endeavors such as
SPS would be.

I recommend two books to help understand the
historical perspective of space politics: "The
heavens and the Earth" by Walter A. McDougal and
"Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership"
by Roger D. Launis and Howard E. McCurdy.

> Anyway, there are small steps to space solar power -
> a solar power
> satellite is really just a large version of a
> commsat. just as the
> Chunnel is just a large tunnel. But the large size
> means space-based
> assembly and repairability are key - there should be
> steps on that road
> with comm sats too, if we really can't make the
> "large leap" to SPS just
> yet.
>
I agree with you on this point. As I know from
reading many of your previous posts on this topic, you
have alot of knowledge on SPS. I would be interested
in knowing if you could devise a roadmap of baby steps
(or technology demonstrators in more polly speak)
needed to finally arrive at a full blown SPS. If an
incremental approach was taken, I wonder how soon we
could make SPS a reality.

Ryan