10-Year Plan

Arthur P. Smith wrote:

>So are you advocating for commercial spending - are you spending
>any of your own money on space right now?
>
I have done so.

>Anyway, NASA's fraction got substantially larger last year as
>the general "space" market was shattered by the collapse of the telcos. And
>it never was anywhere near "tiny". Go ask any of the launch companies
>how much business they're doing right now.
>
So? Now is just a point in time. NASA still isn't the biggest part of
the market even now.
It's more or less impossible for NASA to outgrow the space markets. A
socialist, extremely
wasteful organisation like NASA shows no signs of going into space in a
big way. Space is
not a natural government monopoly; although NASA tries to make it look
that way.

>But communications satellites, which is pretty much all
>"commercial space" amounts to right now (ok, there's a bit of remote
>sensing) is a big dead end for space settlement. Commercial tourism?
>The only launches that have taken humans into space so far are
>the government-funded NASA and Russian programs. Given that the X-prize
>is still a far cry from getting people into orbit, and that
>it seems to be taking years for any commercial entity to even get
>that far, I don't see any hope for that (without government support)
>in the next decade.
>
Oh I don't know. There was hope at the beginning of this decade, with
Rotary Rocket. They
really only failed due to market conditions varying at a critical time.

And private enterprise certainly put Tito in space- not NASA; that was
NOT funded by
Russia- in fact Tito funded them!

>It makes absolutely no difference to the market for commercial
>space settlement that there is $50 billion in commercial satellite
>activity, since there seems to be $0 crossover.
>
It may do if there is a cost pressure. Currently there is none. It's a
bit of a perverse market really.

>>The question isn't what you spend. It's what you launch. I've seen
>>figures that suggest that the true cost of launching a man, even with
>>low tech expendables can be as low as $100,000 per person. And that's
>>low tech. NASA might theoretically achieve 40x this with the space
>>shuttle, which is 'high tech'.
>>
>>
>Currently the minimum cost for a launch to orbit appears to be about
>$20 million. You can pay less if you piggyback on another launch,
>but that's about the best price you can get on the commercial market
>for an entire launch right now.
>
Less. Tito paid about $15 million. The rocket only costs $5 million.

> And the competition recently between
>Ariane, SeaLaunch, the Russians, Ukrainians, Atlas, Delta, etc. has
>been very intense. If you think you can launch for $100,000 per person,
>that's 200 people you're blasting off with in one of these current
>systems. Sounds a bit beyond anything realistic within the next 10 years...
>
No, no. Low tech. Nothing high ISP or particularly cutting edge. In fact
the opposite.
We could do this in 3 years. There's nothing magical.

>Now launch costs do improve with time; probably we can expect
>somewhere around 20% per year. Some of the "rocket-plane" concepts
>like XCOR or Armadillo Aero may be able to dramatically cut costs
>and improve reliability a few years down the road - but right now
>those guys aren't even close to X-prize contention, so that's
>pure speculation what it's really going to cost.
>
No. I've seen plans for MCD. Also I've run my own cost models for a two
stager. I've had
some go as low as ~200/kg. Reusability is key. But not partial
reusability. Not reusing
something that would be cheaper to replace. I believe that SSTO is a red
herring with
current tech; it quite possibly precludes reusability in fact.

And Armadillo just announced they are going for it. So, wrong again.
XCOR haven't announced
but it's possible they're helping out Burt Rutan is my guess; and he has
an X vehicle.

>>The world is not either-or.
>>
>>
>
>Let's see, there's $50 billion in commercial space activity devoted
>to communications satellites. There's $14 billion at NASA, and a few
>billion from other space agencies, devoted to scientific and
>human activities in space. And there's ONE private firm that so far
>is doing ANYTHING (and it's not the dead-end of communications)
>beyond low earth orbit. And you can contribute to its efforts for
>far less than any other space effort would cost you. We've heard all
>the mouthing off - where's the money?
>
Why should I in the UK contribute money to an American firm? I see no
evidence that they
are cutting launch costs. And I have attended conferences with my own
money with an aim
to cut launch costs.

>>[...]
>>
>>
>>>however; all that's needed are a
>>>few well-regulated monopolies...
>>>
>>No that must not occur. Monopolies are nearly always inefficient.
>>
>Yes, but they are also effective.
>
What are you smoking? 500 million per launch is anything but effective.
You can launch
about 10 Protons for that. And the irony is that the Russian space work
is far more
efficient than the American's. The Russians do/did socialism better than
the Americans ;-)

And don't give me any nonsense about Russian wages...that doesn't
explain why they
are so much cheaper.

> Which may be more important right now.
>There's a reason we have patents
>
Yeah so corporations can use them to squelch competition and maintain
monopolies. Very useful.

> and copyrights;
>
Need something to keep the GPL going ;-)

> why we recognize
>property rights.
>
Sometimes governments do that. Sometimes they do not.

> Those are government "monopoly" grants.
>
It's arguable whether they improve our world. This is not self-evident.
I no longer believe
that patents are positive; certainly not for big companies. Individuals,
yes, perhaps.

> The only
>comparable thing in space is ITU grants of spectrum and geosynchronous
>orbit slots. Which has led, as you point out, to a lot of commercial
>activity.
>
> We need something similar to promote space settlement.
>
No. We need cheap, safe space launch. People will go. They like zero-g.
They like looking back
at the earth. People want to go to Mars.

Monopolies are bad in very much most cases. NASAs monopoly power such as
it is, has held space back
by probably 15 years.