[extropy-chat] Slashdot draft: Prediction markets and space development

Mike Lorrey mlorrey at yahoo.com
Mon Jun 13 17:54:38 UTC 2005



--- giorgio gaviraghi <giogavir at yahoo.it> wrote:

> After spaceshipone flight there was a lot of enthudiam
> for the so called space tourism
> IN REALITY PLANS ARE FOR SUBORBITAL 10 MINUTE FLIGHTS
> nothing to do with orbital flights that require ten
> times more speed and higher altiyude together with a
> different and more advanced technology.
> If there is a real market at 250000$ per flight to
> fill the expected capacity, the VIRGIN GALACTIC FUTURE
> PLANE WILL CARRY 5 OR 6 PAYING PASSENGERS
> is unknown.

Actually, the tier two spacecraft design I believe carries 9
passengers. Thousands of persons have already stated an interest in
these flights at these ticket prices.

> past comercial space predictions were always wrong,
> the Iridium disaster is a good reminder.

Iridium suffered from the dot com meltdown melting down the disposable
incomes of millions of tech workers... the dot com meltdown was caused
by the TCRA of 1998.

> I believe that before space could be a profit making
> environment for private enterprises and a new business
> environment space accessibility costs must be slashed
> of two order of magnitude from 10000$ per kg to 100$
> per Kg.
> Witout that it will not produce any progress but
> remain a high risk activity

Based on what facts? The facts are that different products and services
have price and market windows of their very own. You don't provide any
business case for your opinion here. Satellite launch costs currently
run about $5,000/kg (following 40% dollar depreciation of the last few
years) and with the SpaceX will drop to a fraction of that. Getting
people to orbit will always be an entirely different and more expensive
application than getting cargo to orbit.

However, one big cargo that is entirely worth $10k/kg launch costs is
bucky fiber cable. Building a skyhook will provide such a high return
on investment that putting a few million kg of such cable into orbit
will entirely pay for itself handsomely.

Lets say, for instance, we need 10 million kg of buckycable. At
$10k/kg, that is $100 billion in launch costs (plus whatever the costs
of making the cable are, the current $5k/gram is much too high).
Assuming we can get the cost of the cable down to the same range as the
launch costs, this should enable the lifting of a few hundred kg at a
time of bucky cable (to further reinforce the skyhook) at a launch cost
of $10 in electricity plus, say, $100/kg in capital costs, would reduce
the second stage costs by 45%, (and because each reinforcement stage
doubles the carrying capacity of the skyhook) then the third stage
reinforcement costs could be cut 4.5% (in addition to whatever long
term economies of scale are enjoyed from manufacturing buckycable en
masse). In the end you'd have a skyhook capable of lifting a metric ton
a day for at most $415 billion, if not less due to economies of scale.

But a skyhook isn't going to lift itself into space (thinking it does
is the same sort of magical thinking that assumes that AIs will plug
themselves in and magically create their own robotic prostheses.) Until
it is built, we need rockets: noisy, expensive, dirty, dangerous rockets.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

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