Space News Letter to Editor

On Friday, May 9, 2003, at 04:10 PM, victoriatangoman wrote:

> --- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Al Globus wrote:
>
>> That's another letter, but here goes:
>>
>> 1. Suborbital tourism
>> 2. Superior orbital vehicle with NASA money and private work (as
>> outlined in my letter)
>> 3. Orbital sports facility paid for by TV advertising
>
> Can you flesh this out more? What kind of sports? Team or
> individual?

The shuttle can hold about 10, with two needed to fly it. Assuming it
flies again, we could have up to 4v4 team sports as long as the shuttle
pilot and commander can handle the video. As to what sport -- that's
fun to speculate about. Soccer and racketball seem to need the fewest
modifications to the rules to work in 0g.
>
> Will the players live in orbit or will we shuttle them there for the
> game and then being them back?

To draw big crowds you need big names, so shuttle existing sports stars
up.
>
> What will the advertising pay for?

The olympics pulls in billions of advertising revenue. It would be
nice to get some figures for the revenue generated by major sporting
events (super bowel, world cup, olympics) but I don't have the details.

>
> Doesn't this step presuppose an LEO station?

The sports facility IS a LEO station. You need something big (like the
interior of a shuttle ET) so you probably don't want to launch the
facility.

>
>> 4. Orbital tourism
>
> I picture sub-orbital tourism to be a ride to the edge of space in
> order to experience 0-G and the view.
>
> How is orbital tourism different other than going higher?
> If that's
> all it is, why do you consider it to be a significant milestone?

What would you pay more for: a ride on a great roller coaster or a week
in Hawaii? Which would, on the average, be more significant?

Also, obviously, an orbital tourist business is a lot harder to do and
much closer to the launch facilities we need for colonization.
>
>> 5. 0g retirement homes for wealthy folk who don't want to live in
> wheel
>> chairs
>
> Doesn't this presuppose an existing station, or do you just put the
> retired folk in plastic bubbles :) to float in space :)

Again, it IS a space station (actually, a space colony).
>
>> 6. Asteroidal or lunar mining
>
> Shouldn't this come much earlier, or are you launching all of that
> mass from Earth to build the abovementioned facilities.

The above facilities don't need extraterrestrial materials. They
aren't all that big and (with the possible exception of 5) orbit below
the van Allen belts and don't need all that much shielding.

>
>> 7. First small habitats for folk that will have children
>> 8. Colonize the solar system
>> 9. Generation ships to the nearest stars
>>
>> 3 and 4 may reverse order
>> 6 and 7 may reverse order
>>
>
> I realize that there isn't much glamour in building infrastructrure
> in orbit, but I just can't see how these plans are realized without
> existing infrastructure being in place.
>
> IMHO, the best things NASA could do, would be to develop the housing
> and transportation infrastructure in orbit and keep extending that
> infrastructure outwards from the Earth.

It's too soon. The transportation facilities aren't up to it. That
was Reagan's huge mistake with the ISS. He believed the fantasy that
the shuttle was a cheap, reliable, operational transportation system.
Once you have that, some sort of space station makes sense, but not
before.

Space tourism could be our ticket to the stars. Save your pennies,
suborbital flights for $100,000 may start in 2005! See
http://www.spaceadventures.com/suborbital for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.