Re: New heavy lifter?

From: Dave O'Neill (_at_)
Date: 07/29/04 

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 07:46:16 GMT

<pentaj2@removeme.scranton.edu> wrote in message
news:f59gg0155q18dibcsf90q4fpjl0i1h9uih@4ax.com...
> On 28 Jul 2004 06:45:41 -0700, daveon@gmail.com (Dave O'Neill) wrote:
>
> >
> >Slow expansion may be the only option.
> >
> >There's also the small matter that it might not be US/Euro people who
> >do it either.
> >
> >But that's certainly not an O'Neill future, and it's not what a lot of
> >the free space types want to see. But as a friend pointed out on our
> >blog recently, there's a lot of reasons to want to set up off world
> >colonies which have nothing to do with business.
>
> More to the point, one of the nasty problems right now is that, for
> space (barring what I'm increasingly coming to believe are fairly
> starry-eyed ideas like space tourism), government will likely still be
> a major customer.

Well, if there was a pressing need, even at current prices large
corporations could afford space operations. Running a man-tended Mir style
space complex is not hugely expensive in comparison to some business
projects like, for example, the development of new semi conductors or
certain types of drug.

> Government funding will NOT accommodate the massive spike that would
> be required for a fast-moving program.
>
> For a lot of reasons, any lunar activities would have to be
> slow-moving.

I agree.

> NASA could, I suppose, make a decent go of it if they were reasonable
> in terms of aggressively licensing spin-offs.

Well, here I agree with Rand. NASA are certainly part of the problem, as
are the ESA and now the Russians.

However, you can run a business sub-contracting to the Russians. Gerry Webb
of Commercial Space Technologies has been doing it for some time. He has a
aim to chalk up 20 commercial launches by the end of 2005 (I think he's
going to be missing that but he's already got half a dozen under his belt.)

Dave

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