[ExI] The L5 Society ( was: EP and Peak oil.)

[Kevin Freels]

I've been following this thread for some time and have so far managed to 
fight off the urge to comment. But I hadn't yet seen any mention of 
protecting this trillion dollar behemoth from natural and unnatural 
disasters. micrometeorites that our atmosphere eats up could tear one of 
these to pieces. The chance is slim of course, but the target is larger 
than most satellites and when your one shot is worth that much money you 
would have to find ways to make those odds even better, not worse. Also, 
your rocket would have to been man-rated or better to provide that extra 
level of caution. How many successful test launches would you require of 
a new launch vehicle before you stick a 1 TRILLION dollar payload on it? 
How much more will these test launches and additional developments cost? 
Wouldn't it make more sense to put hundreds or even thousands of much 
smaller satellites into orbit? Then the loss of one isn't so dramatic 
and you could use profits to bootstrap the project with much lower up 
front development costs.


Bryan Bishop wrote:
> On Thursday 10 April 2008, John K Clark wrote:
>   
>> That is a perfect example of a statistic that may be true but is
>> totally irrelevant; the fuel costs are a trivial aspect of the cost
>> to get into geosynchronous orbit. Right now just the launch costs
>> would be close to a trillion dollars per satellite, that's just to
>> put it in the proper place, and that's not counting on the fact that
>> then you've still got to actually build the thing. You're going to
>> have to figure out a way that is one hell of a lot cheaper than that
>> and I don't see how ground launch from Earth can do it.
>>     
>
> Please show me where those trillions of dollars would go.
>
> - Bryan
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