[ExI] Power satellites

[painlord2k at libero.it]

Il 23/04/2009 17.49, John K Clark ha scritto:
>
> Dan <dan_ust at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>> All the numbers on their cost and efficiency are based on speculation.
> "Keith Henson" <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
>
>> No, they are based on utterly sound physics. [...]
>> Capital cost (which I didn't mention)
>
> That is the problem. You keep going on and on about the energy required to
> put a power satellite into geosynchronous orbit but I don't give a hoot in
> hell about that; I'm interested in the dollars required to put it into
> orbit. Not to mention the dollars required to build it.

Brad Edwards report to NIAC put development costs to 2 billions in 10 years.
Building costs 10-20 billions in 3-4 years. Depend on the legal 
framework, mainly.
This for the first, the second and following would cost much less as you 
use the first to put in GEO the latter.

>  > isn't entirely speculation either.
>
> Of course it is! By honest, if you were a prudent banker would you invest
> hundreds of billions of dollars of your bank's money into Power Satellites
> on the basis of these cost estimates?

Hundred of billions?
1/10 of this for the first, and you repay it near immediately building 
the second and the third and selling them to the highest bidders.

And much of the technology developed for the project can be resold to 
others in other fields of applications; the cable would sell itself.
Indeed, the R&D in this field is doing well without billions or hundreds 
of millions.

> I wouldn't and I'd take my savings
> out of any bank that did.
 > And you thought investing in sub prime mortgages was
> risky!

I would invest a part of mine in the project.
It is like investing in Google or Yahoo or MS or Ebay before they become 
what they are now.
Mainly, I would consider the people in the management to evaluate the risk.


> The number of large projects that have come in at or under budget could be
> counted on the fingers of one hand, and this thing is larger than any of
> them,

Not really.
It will cost less than the Bridge that will link Messina with Reggio 
Calabria. Or less than a CVN. And less of the money that is funnelled to 
the Palestinian National Authority by the US government.

Mr. Gates and a couple of friends could finance the development without 
problems. The only real show-stopper is the government involvement, the 
laws in the books and the international politics.


> and we have no experience to help us because nobody has ever done
> anything even remotely like it before. I'd be very surprise if these cost
> "estimates" (optimistic guesses would be a better word) were accurate
> within 1000%, probably not accurate to 10,000%.

Until we do it for the first time, we don't really know how hard it is.

You forget the "The terrorist will attack it" point.

Mirco