[ExI] Fwd: Space governance

[spike at rainier66.com]

> On Behalf Of John Grigg via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] Fwd: Space governance

 

>…Spike, as our resident engineer, does Ben's math check out?  :  )

 

 

Ja, sure does.  

 

John we knew back in the early 90s that any notion of people living long term in space was really dependent on Single Stage To Orbit, or failing that… all recoverable everything.  We knew you don’t build a 737 in Seattle, fly it to Orlando, unload the passengers, then hurl it into the sea.  No part of that aircraft is thrown out.

 

Space hardware is inherently expensive, that isn’t going to change.  Until we get some way to get stuff to orbit cheaply, none of the space-hab notions are practical.  All supplies need to be hauled up there for a long time.  We can’t do that at $10K per kilo, which is one man-day of food.  Can’t do that now, can’t do it later.

 

To answer your question: space habs aren’t there yet.  There are technologies missing, such as how to make food from sunlight a looooot more efficiently than putting it thru vegetables.

 

It pains me to be the wet blanket on the notion, but I used to it.  I ended up in the same position with the early 90s engineering teams working on SSTO: I calculated that anything you can do with one stage can be done better with two.  Turns out that was true then and still is now.

 

We aren’t there on space habs.

 

spike

 

 

…Draw your own conclusions (but check my maths first, I'm not exactly the 
most numerate person in the world).

-- 
Ben Zaiboc

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