[extropy-chat] FWD [Skeptic] Re: defending the Vision for Space Exploration

Adrian Tymes wingcat at pacbell.net
Thu Jan 20 21:10:45 UTC 2005


--- "Terry W. Colvin" <fortean1 at mindspring.com> wrote:
> I don't see how this could happen, for how is one
> supposed to make money
> out of space travel? There is a small market for
> firing very rich
> people, celebrities and the like, into space for
> fun.

And a large market for firing everyday people into
space, once the cost is reduced such that they can
afford it.  Market studies by NASA and others indicate
that there is discontinuity somewhere between $10,000
and $100,000 per person, maybe a bit higher, just for
an up-and-down trip (even if you don't actually go
into orbit).

> But there is
> no money to be gained - at least in the short to
> medium term - from the
> pursuit of knowledge which underlies the sending of
> unmanned missions to
> Saturn, Titan and so on. What else could we get from
> these places? Even
> if they turned out to have interesting minerals, it
> wouldn't be
> cost-effective to ship them in bulk back to earth.
> (There go all those
> SF films about miners in space....)

Actually, it might be cost-effective to ship platinum
and similar precious metals back from asteroids: you'd
concentrate on just the highest value per unit mass,
and asteroids don't have major launch/landing delta-V.
Again, it would help to significantly reduce the cost
of launch from Earth.  (Of course, to get significant
quantities of this, you'd focus on M-type asteroids
like Amun, which are relatively rare.)

There are those who claim the value of raw iron in
space is greatly increased by its being in space.  I
disagree with them, at least for the short term,
because that would require a number of customers for
iron in space, which do not yet exist.  Maybe in the
future, though.  Say, bring an M-type asteroid to the
L4 or L5 point, extract the platinum there for
transfer to Earth, and leave the rest of the iron
along with satellites to mark it as "claimed".  If and
when space industry subsequently emerges, you can cash
in on it (and give it a boost)...but that's beyond the
time horizon for most investors.  Better to focus on
stuff that's valuable after being brought down to
Earth.

> Handing over space to the private realm would lead
> to a concentration on
> those things that might make money - holidays in
> orbit etc - over those
> that clearly won't, e.g. can we land something on
> Pluto just to see if
> it has any atmosphere?

NASA would continue to have a proper role in the
latter, in that case, rather than trying to dominate
and dictate the former as well.  This is an outcome
that those of us who wish for more private space
companies would like to see happen - even if it means
the destruction of "NASA" and its replacement with an
equivalent agency that does not have NASA's current
management culture.



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