From: vince@offshore.ai (Vincent Cate) Newsgroups: sci.space.policy Subject: Re: When will we be able to afford space settlement? References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.42.133.252 Message-ID: <9186edb5.0404180452.1f5fca64@posting.google.com> dezakin@usa.net (Dez Akin) wrote: > I believe that as the economy grows and technology advances, > commercial space ventures will become affordable, but not for a long > time. Does anyone want to look into the crystal ball and see whether > space is still dominated by government prestige and defence programs > still by 2050? With a space tether you can transfer the momentum from a tourist returning to earth to a tourist coming up into space. This makes it possible to have far cheaper flights, like $50,000 for a week in space. At this kind of price the market should be very large. For every 20,000 tickets sold at this price you gross another billion dollars. We won't know for sure the exact size of the market until it is a real market, but it seems to be more than $10 billion per year. Note that the total world tourism market is around $400 billion/year. Whatever the exact market is, it seems plenty big enough to justify the development of a suborbital RLV, the tether, and a hotel. Of course this is assuming that the development is done by a private venture with people and structures like those at scaled.com or spacex.com and not a bureaucracy like at nasa.gov. Once you have a hotel you will have employees and some long term customers (paying by the year and not the week). You will also want to grow food, recycle water, etc. I think this will mark the start of "space settlement". I think this will dominate government space programs well before 2050, maybe even by 2020. I really think it is possible that someone like Spacex could have a 400 room hotel in space before NASA gets people back to the moon. Space tethers exchanging momentum for tourists coming/going to the moon would make tourism to the moon not much harder than just getting into orbit. People would pay much more to go to the moon, and orbital customers would come back for a moon trip. So tourism to the moon should follow soon after volume tourism to orbit. With tethers you really like 2 way traffic, since you can exchange the momentum. But the traffic just needs to be near balanced in terms of mass, it does not have to be the same stuff. So you can send people to the moon and bring back the same mass of moon rocks and things will be great. So sending settlers and their equipment (one way traffic) to the moon is actually easier than sending them to orbit. So big settlements on the moon will happen soon after volume tourism to the moon. My guess is by 2030. -- Vince ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Vincent Cate Space Tether Enthusiast vince@offshore.ai http://spacetethers.com/ Anguilla, East Caribbean http://offshore.ai/vince ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You have to take life as it happens, but you should try to make it happen the way you want to take it. - German Proverb