[ExI] Fwd: Space governance

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sat, Sep 26, 2020 at 7:05 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Note I'm not talking about  monetary cost. That varies, but the energy
> cost (cost in energy, not monetary cost of energy) doesn't (the minimum
> energy cost, anyway).
>

And the energy cost is almost irrelevant, save that it informs the monetary
cost.  It's the monetary cost that will gateway getting people into space.

It is a given that the cost of launching things into space will have to
come down a lot before many people move into space.  This is being worked
on, and seems likely to happen to a sufficient degree within a few
decades.  (Disclaimer: I'm one of the people working on it.)

There is a technological element necessary to this end (higher energy
fuels, that enable fully reusable spacecraft), but there is a logistical
element necessary too.  Currently spaceflight is rare because it is
expensive - but also, it is expensive because it is rare.  Much of the cost
is not actually in the rockets themselves, but in all the logistics around
a rocket launch that could be amortized across several launches if only
there were several launches to amortize across, but there are not.
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