SSTO Comments

Seems to me the weakest part of your plan is still the Russian Space
Agency's revitalization of the Buran program. I read the article where the
official said they're going to revive the Buran. But especially with an
agency with as little transparency as the RSA, a statement like that is a
long way from accomplished fact.
Plan and design, yes; but keep a sharp eye out for other signs of progress
at Baikonur before you hang out a shingle and make a fool of yourself.

Meanwhile you might take a stab at a market study for lottery tickets and
other routes of selling seats. One thing that many Americans overlook is
that, as powerful as the free market V-8 engine is, it is not a trivial task
to hang it on engine mounts, tune it, and make it perform like you want.
Like golf, engineering and playing the violin, the people we usually see
driving that capitalist race car are the ones who do it flawlessly, and they
make it look simple. Deceptively so. If you haven't done some homework on
your market segments, appropriate ticket prices, promotion, costs, etc., you
can easily over-commit or under-commit yourself right out of the market.
I'm not talking about the difference between a profitable year or a
break-even year; I'm talking about the business equivalent of life or
suicide. As in driving your powerful new sports car off a cliff because you
can't control it.

I'm not saying don't do it--I'm hopeful and even enthusiastic. But whatever
you do, absolutely don't be another space geek turning public opinion even
further away from supporting space travel with some amateurish attempt that
falls flat. Go rent the movie "Tucker" and watch it, and at least don't
make the same mistakes he made. Your project needs to inspire confidence by
a competent and professionally run campaign, and I'm not just talking about
the advertising. Or else it needs to fly below the radar of public opinion
until it succeeds the first time. The latter is a lot easier to do, but it
limits the number of tickets you can sell.

>So whats holding us up from contracting with
>Buran appointment-makers and start designing relatively cheap 50 pax
>modules and market seats through convenience store lotteries? OK so we add
>a couple of Science Museums ticket locations as well for image sake....
>maybe a couple of vending machines in JPL and Kennedy (you know the techies
>there would like a turn on the "roman candle" ride ) what else do we need?
>Why wait till possibly 2005 for some oother commercial,venture to beat us
>to
>the punch. First group in the market has the best chance to dominate it,
>yes?
>
>forget space elevator, launches using hundreds of thousands of whippit
>canesters, ballons to toposphere etc...
>
>whos gonna get out their graphics program and design neato tickets and
>Point
>of purchase displays and window posters to get the ball rolling? Perhaps
>we
>need to start saving our nickles to afford band space for a web site...i'm
>sure there will be thousand s of hits. We can get plenty of free publicity
>from CNN, the networks, SCIFI mags, techy mags etc.
>
>???
>
>bob
>SLF
>
>From: "Al Globus"
>To:
>Sent: Monday, June 10, 2002 11:57 AM
>Subject: Re: Fw: [spacesettlers] Re: SSTO Comments
>
> > I don't remember the exact figures, but I'm pretty sure the Soviet
> > manned vehicles are roughly as safe (or unsafe) as the US shuttle.
> >
> > On Saturday, June 8, 2002, at 05:19 AM, panamabob wrote:
> >
> > > We agreed that USA expensive tech is useful and mostly advantages but
> > > also
> > > agreed that Ruskies tech is serviceable, and although we don't all
> > > agree as
> > > to its safety,
> >
>-------------------
> > The dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid because they weren't
> > space-faring. It's almost as if Gaia then thought "Well, dinosaurs
> > worked pretty well, but space-faring is necessary. Maybe I'll should
> > try mammals this time." Humanity is now developing systems to detect and
> > deflect asteroids, and could build orbital space colonies to spread
> > beyond Earth to insure life would survive a planetary catastrophe.
> >
> > Al Globus
> > CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
> > http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html
> >

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