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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. <br>
<br>
<br>
Bryan Bishop wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:200804101650.26257.kanzure@gmail.com" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">On Thursday 10 April 2008, John K Clark wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">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.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Please show me where those trillions of dollars would go.
- Bryan
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</pre>
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