New Member

Brad Walsh wrote:
>
> I for one am hoping to some day see a public stock offering in a
> company that will launch micro- or mini-factories to produce O2, H2, H2O,
> sand, concrete, steel plate, etc., in orbit, from Near-Earth Asteroids or
> whatever they can find.
>
> I'd invest in a nano. Because between the Marsophiles, the O'Neillites,
> Bigelow Aerospace and the ISS, there's a present and future market assured,
> and at a very atttractive price per kilogram. Such a company could pay off
> its launch costs in a decade, and be making pure profit for 200 years out,
> not to mention providing an inestimable service to mankind by facilitating
> its space-based future.
>

I don't think most American investors would be interested -- they want
their payoff in ten days, not ten years, and most wouldn't believe the
ten-year number anyway.

I think most investors would choke at the start-up costs (launch vehicle
technologies, scalable habitat design, paying about a dollar a second
hazardous duty pay to the workers to get the habitat part built before you
even start chasing and harvesting NEOs, half-a-mil death insurance policies
on them ...)

Right now the only customer whose doorbell you could ring is the ISS. My
pessimism tells me that until the Chinese put up their own station or
stations, that's all there will be.

Steven