Lunar elevators

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 10:04:44 -0000, Andrew Goddard
wrote:
> Collin hit nails on the head with:
>
> >Unfortunately, space travel is not just about
> technology -- if it was, we'd have been on Mars in the 1980s and we'd
> be in the asteroids, Jupiter and Saturn now.
>
> Absolutely. In that instance, the infrastructure to living and working
> in space would be pretty solid: long duration missions, closed-cycle
> life support, spin habitats. All achieved. What we currently have is a
> pussy-footing attitude to space where:
>
> 1/ the technology is grossly inflated in terms of price.

I've looked into this quite a lot. At first blush it seems to be, but
as you go into it quite deeply, it's not as inflated as it seems. NASA
are not good at cheap. They throw paperwork at it till it gets
expensive.

But other countries are still fairly expensive, even Russia really.

I think it should cost between $200,000 and $2 million to put a person
into space and back.

> This is in part
> due to NASA running the show as a government agency,

True, to a degree. For example the Shuttle is more expensive than say,
Soyuz, even when you take into account the differences in wages.

> where the big
> aerospace companies look upon the billions of dollars of government
> hand-outs as sweeteners to the high tech/military/aerospace sectors; and
> in part because there's this perceived need to raise the safety bar to a
> level which would have stifled (for example) the nascent days of the
> aircraft industry.

Yes, but the technology was much more accessible. The chance of the
whole thing simply exploding and killing everyone within a few hundred
meters was much lower. Rockets tend to do that. There's no reason that
they have to do that, and with care they won't, but they tend to.

Aeroplanes don't.

> We oughtn't forget that /thousands/ of dreamers and
> visionaries died during the 20th century in order that we can fly the
> Atlantic in five hours for a couple of hundred dollars with less risk
> than "a drive to work".

Actually, the risk is about the same.

> 2/ no-one today has the ability to see the big picture and the clout to
> bring it to fruition. Von Braun had it, and was lucky enough to find
> himself in the right place at the right time, with (as importantly) a
> near-deified dead president pushing the program along. Political
> short-termism will forever kill governmentally-backed projects for Mars
> colonies, permanent lunar bases, SPS's, industry in EO, etc.

Possibly.

> > I'm starting to truly think that what we do
> on the Moon and Mars won't be up to Dubya or NASA, but the success or
> failure of SpaceShipOne.

It's more likely to work. The problem with NASA is that it has a fixed
budget- the launch rate will be static. With a commercial launch
program the launch rate can grow exponentially, and the cost will then
reduce.

> Andy Goddard

--
-Ian Woollard

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in
practice there is."
"a society in which people can do and say what they want will also
tend to be one in which the most efficient solutions win" - Paul
Graham