Smells Like Teen Spirit

On Fri, 16 May 2003, Ryan Z wrote:

> However, look at global trade today. What would
> happen if the cost of shipping goods across the ocean
> we ten times as high as they are now? How would that
> effect our electronic industry? Would we have such a
> grerat gobal economy if shipping costs were higher?
> The same lesson I believe applies to space.

Hi Ryan,

good comments. I think this is your main point - at least
on the importance of CATS. If the transport cost were much higher,
obviously many more things would have to be produced locally rather
than being imported. Would this necessarily be a bad thing? In the
space analogy, the higher the cost to orbit, the more things it would
be economical to produce in space, rather than importing from Earth.
Doesn't seem such a bad consequence to me... The problem is high transport
costs increase overall costs and discourage the initial investments
needed in remote locations, and also discourage future markets like
tourism that are more heavily dependent on transport costs.

So cheaper access to space would obviously be a great help. But personally
I think we (1) will get started without it, if necessary, and (2) by
doing so we'll increase launch demand sufficiently to motivate innovations
that should keep launch costs coming down.

Arthur