Cost not an issue???

> At the end of his response to my posting Fred says
>
> "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."

Actually, I said that.

I think rather than say "cost is not an issue" it would be more accurate
to characterize my entire point as "launch cost is not the bottleneck"
because rich people could go into space now but mostly have no reason to
(except as a thrill ride).

I think you would have a better chance convincing me of the value of
CATS if you focused on arguing that the R&D needed for self-replicating
technology in space using space materials needs to be done in space by
humans, not in computer simulation as I propose. Then we could have a
fine discussion over the value of simulations. :-)

As for a factor of ten, that's just for putting people in orbit. At
$1000 per pound, the cost of launching a person is around $150K, and so
about the cost of a mortgage, and so available to most western people.
But personally, I think the future will be much different from that and
economic predictions will be meaningless as the ration tokens we call
money won't be important in the future in most situations (think Star
Trek type society where basics including travel just aren't rationed).
As I said at the end, my argument wasn't to be elitist, just to show
that CATS isn't the real bottleneck.

As I implied, launch costs really don't matter even at $10,000 per pound
if you are only going to launch one payload which will self-replicate
and then make wealth the whole human race can share in.

For references, a SSPS could (in theory) just punch down a big laser
beam that could be used to heat propellant in a launch capsule in the
beam, so no need for rectennas etc. on the ground or receiving end in
that model. Of course, such powerful lasers could also be weapons, so
that approach may also assume a certain social advance among all
Earthlings. :-)

--Paul Fernhout