cheap orbital insertion

.......... The maximum acceleration a human body can take and stillsurvive is about 200g. There has been a racecar driver who hit the wallhead-on at over 200 km/h, and decellerated in about one meter; he receivedfirst aid within seconds, and prompt medical treatment. He was comatose,but eventually recovered. That was about 150 g for less than 4 tenths ofa second. Pilots (and astronauts) generally black out at 10-12 g, and maintainingblood flow to the brain requires a specialized breathing technique, somethinglike pushing really hard when constipated. Anything above 6 g is uncomfortable.The US Space Shuttle experiences about 2.5-3 g of acceleration, to provideprotection for the sensitive life experiments they carry.
If, as I suspect, the first really large market for humans-in-space istourism, the launch must be resonably comfortable or your market will disappear. Humans-in-space is a necessary condition for space settlement.
As John Glen proved, this acceleration is eventolerable for senior citizens, if they are in relatively good health.
For some of the rigours of space flight, senior citizens are actually betteradapted than younger people. For example, hyper-gravity experimentsat NASA Ames suggest that the hardened arteries of senior citizens don'tallow blood to pool in the lower extremities and cause blackouts by reducingblood flow to the brain, a problem with younger, fitter individuals.
Al Globus
aglobus@..., (650) 604-4404
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html
The dinosaurs weren't spacefaring. We are. I don't think that's an accident.
Maybe we are life's taxi to the stars.
I think we should:
1. Devote half of NASA's budget ($7 billion) to reaching NASA's 2020goal of
reducing launch costs to Low-Earth-Orbit to $220/kg with a 0.01% failurerate.
This should enable space tourism. The resulting orbital hotels willneed to
develop efficient orbital life support and other necessary technologies.
2. Build orbital space colonies. The materials in the largest asteroidare
sufficient for orbital colonies with a combined surface area about500 times
greater than Earth's. Eros alone could make over ten thousand spacecolonies,
each with about about 10 square kilometers of 1g living area.
3. After a few generations of orbital living, people won't need theircolony
to be near Sol. Then small groups of colonies with populations in the
tens-of-thousands can set out on multi-decade journeys to nearbystars.
Except the launch goals, none of this is even a little bit official.