New Member

Brad said:
>
> Even so, wouldn't the taxpayers jump at obtaining atmospheric gasses for the
> ISS at half the price of those launched from Earth? And you might do a
> google about Bigelow Aerospace, they've got firm business plans for
> inflatable orbital habs within the next 8 years. Funding already in place.
> Mostly they just need launch alternatives to NEO, and he's sponsoring an
> X-Prize-like contest to spur innovation there.
>

1) I believe every Shuttle launch costs about the same, minus the specific
R&D cost for the scientific payloads they boost. If the shuttle didn't
have to carry oxy to the ISS, they'd carry more science instead. The
public for the most part aren't interested in that micro-level of
information, I don't think. I know *I* didn't scrutinize the package load
of each Shuttle mission to see if anything could be left home.

2) If the ISS is your only customer, I can't see how providing them with
space-based breathables will be less costly than mailing them up the
gravity well; unless some rich relative, or countryfull of them, bequeaths
you all of the infrastructure for launching materials into space, building
the platforms and habitats and extraction plants, and the tugs to go get a
NEO gassy rock and bring it back, so it won't have to be figured into your
per-kilogram prices. Even if it were all built with micro-robots, someone
is going to be paid big bucks to design, construct, program, and test the
robots. All to avoid hoisting air to a so-far total of two customers
floating in a can in space?

> Just how did the first electric utilities start, anyway? They had a huge
> initial startup cost (generators, wiring to customers) and a
> less-than-certain market (not many electric gagets, not much demand), yet
> they went from 0 to 60 in about 20 years, from 1895 to 1915, in the face of
> tough competition from natural gas. I seem to remember a small number of
> wealthy backers, small-scale demonstration projects at a few city blocks
> around Edison's place in New Jersey, a splashy electric light display at a
> World's Fair, parallel development of electric appliances to spur demand.
>

The quality of electric light was significantly better than gas lights,
except in theaters where they used an extremely bright light that was
produced by heating (I believe) balls of limestone in a natural gas flame.
These were placed along the front of the stage facing the performers, hence "limelight."

The World's Fair demo was a nice idea; it put the benefits of controlled
electricity into the public mind. But it didn't cost comparatively all
that much to do. Unlike space industry, the bill probably wasn't equal to
the GNP of even *one* country. Also, once the World's Fair demo was made
and people were thinking about maybe running copper wire through their gas
pipes, there were large concentrations of customers almost everywhere, so a
local generating plant had a huge potential customer base within a
baseball's throw. Not yet so in space.

Another reason people chose electricity was its safety compared to gas.
Most of the time you had to do something stupid with electricity to turn it
deadly, like sticking wires in your mouth to see if they're "hot," or
dropping the radio into your bath. You couldn't fill an apartment with
electricity and blow it up. You couldn't fill a house with electricity and
suffocate everyone inside. That was a significant improvement. Space gas
doesn't offer that significant an improvement over terrestrial sources.

As an aside, Edison won the light bulb battle, but he lost the DC vs AC
war. His concept basically was for a DC generator on every block. Someone
else (Westinghouse? Tesla?) did the math and realized that with
transformers to ramp the voltage up and down, line losses would shrink
drastically compared to DC, thus allowing fewer but larger generating
plants (economies of scale) and more sellable kwh at the customers' meters
for the same generator capacity. This probably has nothing to do with
space settlements, but I just had to show off. :-)

Steve