cheap orbital insertion

Darren Brown wrote:
>By the way, NASA will launch the external tank forfree, if you can
>retreive it, make sure the rapid decay of the insulation coating
>doesn't rain anywhere near existing sattelites ..
The Russians have an even better deal, one complete,functional (sort
of, okay, sometimes, in a way) space station that I'm sure they
would sell you for a really good price, if you would only take over
the running costs.
MirCorp tried to do this, and did a pretty good job, but they fell short. Operating costs are high. They did put space tourism in the news, and that'sprobably a good thing.
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.