reality check

> I am dedicated to a space solution but if we are to make progress
> toward establishing SPSs and space colonies we must counter the
> arguments claiming that the cost of reaching space and establishing
> these facilities is 50x-100x higher than establishing alternatives on
> the ground. The solution is to first develop cheaper methods of
> reaching space.

This is the basis for the argument for CATs (Cheap Access to Space) and
http://www.space-frontier.org/Projects/CatsPrize/
various legislative pushes (where I think Rick Tumlinson goes astray)
http://www.ricktumlinson.com/sections/appearances/House_3_95.html
and at least a couple of billionaires (including Jeff Bezos of
Amazon.com) putting a lot of money into this (perhaps as businesses, but
essentially still billionaire hobbies).While I wish them well, I think
this approach towards space settlement is misguided. Let's work the
numbers.

The USA has about two million millionaires. There are many more elsewhere.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/07/0711_030711_money.html
"In total, there are an estimated 7.3 million people in the world whose
assetsexcluding their homeamount to U.S. $1 million or more. Behind
Europe, North America has the second highest concentration of
millionaires at 2.2 million. The Asia Pacific region accounts for 1.8
million. Latin America and the Middle East account for 300,000 each, and
Africa accounts for 100,000."

At current launch costs of $10000 per pound, to put a 150 pound adult
(me on a starvation diet for a couple months!) would be about
$1,500,000, or $6,000,000 for a family of four. Now that amount of money
being paid is well within the reach of hundreds of thousands of people
if they liquidate all their assets -- homes, stocks, retirement
accounts, and so forth. Now if you could guarantee that they and their
children would have a better life living in cities in space, then some
percentage of them might well do that. The problem as I see it is, we
can't guarantee that right now. The other problem is of course, there is
no place to live right now for hundreds of thousands of people showing
up in their underwear and starving with no shelter or clothes or food or
air or water or other goods for them.

One solution is to pursue the 1980s NASA vision of first putting
automated factories on the moon (or at asteroids) and using robotics
(and teleoperation() make space settlements complete with food, water,
clothes, etc. for when these people show up. It would in theory only
take one Apollo-type launch to the Moon with the seed of an automated
factory instead of a LEM to start the process rolling, and that would
have an up front cost of a few billion dollars or so -- far less than
the total launch costs for all the people. The factory could also carry
out putting up mass drivers etc. to realize Gerry's vision of building
near earth habitats from lunar resources.

So, as I see it, launch costs are not a bottleneck. What is a bottle
neck is we do not know how to make that seed self-replicating factory,
or have plans for what it should create once it is landed on the moon or
on a near-earth asteroid.

So that is why I think billionaires like Jeff Bezos spending money on
CATS is a tragedy -- they should IMHO be spending their money on DOGS
instead (Design of Great Settlements). But the designs can be done more
slowly without much money using volunteers and networked personal
computers -- that was the point of my SSI paper:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html

Disclaimer: I don't think the best way to settle space is to only put
rich people there; the analysis is more for sake of argument then
anything else; I think with improved materials science and volunteer
efforts, reduced launch costs by a factor of ten will happen almost
inevitably down the road. And even if not, an automated space based
infrastructure could send laser launch vehicles down to earth and beam
energy for then to use to launch people at no cost -- a good use of SPSS
in my opinion. But once again this goes to show how the bootstrapping
approach differs from the Earth infrastrucutre approach.

--Paul Fernhout