New Member

From: Steve Long [mailto:longsteven@...]

> Mike, isn't it too early for a business plan in either
> instance? We can barely get supplies up to an existing
> orbital station to keep two astronauts alive and healthy.
> How are we going to get a few aircraft-carrier-equivalents
> of construction materials and consumables and a crew to
> assemble it all into space if we can't even do that?

It can't be denied that we've got to get there from here, nor that
"here" is a long ways away from where we need to be.

> Rather than focus on the end product, maybe we should as
> a first step consider exerting our intellectual efforts on
> how to cheaply get large masses of payload into orbit?

I get this a lot. Someone talks about permanent human settlements on
Mars. I propose permanent human settlements in orbit as an alternative.
Then I get told I'm a pie-in-the-sky dreamer because first we have to
think about CATS. But if our present lack of CATS makes discussions of
High Frontier premature (and I can see and respect that point of view),
why does it not also make discussions of permanent human settlements on
Mars premature?

I think one point we can all agree on is that if person "A" is talking
about reducing the cost for a pound to orbit, person "B" is talking
about High Frontier with SPS as the business plan, and person "C" is
talking about Mars settlements, person "A" is discussing the most
near-term and critical issue. I can see the argument that he's the most
practical, attacking the immediate problem. But persons "B" and "C" are
equally-far-out in terms of their projections, and the only distinction
between them is that person "B" is trying to work inside the
requirements of economics while "C" is leaving that out of his
projections.

But then we have person "D" who doesn't think space travel is going to
amount to anything until we have interstellar travel based on FTL
drives. So while "A" may rightly criticize "B" and "C" for getting
ahead of themselves, they're still not the worst offenders around. :)

Regards,

Mike Combs