Answer to Ian Wollard

Ed Minchau wrote:
The electromagnetic gun I propose could bring launchcosts down by a
factor of 1000, by leaving most if not all of the fuel on the
ground. Multiple daily launches means that the same operationthat
used to take tens of thousands of people could be largely automated,
with people working on payloads in an assembly line structure. Think
of something like the daily operations of a large automobile
manufacturing plant.
Lots of people have made claims that they would drive the cost of launchdown. The few that have actually got to implementation have missedtheir targets by fairly large margins. For example, Orbital Sciencesdeveloped a small launcher intended to cut the cost of small payloads bya factor of two. They were actually able to decrease costs by about10 percent. This was a private development, although they may have gotsome government money.
An electromagnetic gun is certainly an interesting concept, deservesR&D dollars, and might reduce cost substantially, but claiming a factorof 1000 without having actually launched anything seriously underminescredibility.
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.