Re: A pro-business way to spend $U$356.5 billion to $2 trillion the only hope for SPS
- From: "Bill Haught" <wlhaughttooth@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 08:52:24 GMT
"William Mook" <william.mook@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1168397889.039237.40860@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The US government needs to change the role of NASA from a projects
oriented agency to a mission oriented agency dedicated to reducing the
momentum costs and establishing the technical conditions for commercial
space launch using assets currently owned by the government. This
would put NASA in the same role in the space age, as NACA had in the
early days of the air age. The aerospace community should focus its
attention on reduction of momentum costs, just as electronics
engineering community has focused its attention on the reduction of
feature costs.
With real interest rates at practically zero and 1% of the population having
perhaps 50% or so of the nations wealth due to Reich wing tax cut and spend,
do we need NASA for this?
Then too, we don't really have free trade (which is part of the problem).
The US government also needs to establish property rights on celestial
bodies and regions of the solar system and give the ability to private
individuals and companies to develop resources across the solar system
and bring them to market.
Like they did with a swath of North America? How did the U.S. government
get all that land by divine right?
"Ask any child what he knows about Shays's rebellion, and he will answer,
"Oh, some of the farmers couldn't pay their taxes, and Shays led a rebellion
against the court-house at Worcester, so they could burn up the deeds; and
when Washington heard of it he sent over an army quick and taught them a
good lesson" -- "And what was the result of it?" "The result? Why -- why --
the result was -- Oh yes, I remember -- the result was they saw the need of
a strong federal government to collect the taxes and pay the debts." Ask if
he knows what was said on the other side of the story, ask if he knows that
the men who had given their goods and their health and their strength for
the freeing of the country now found themselves cast into prison for debt,
sick, disabled, and poor, facing a new tyranny for the old; that their
demand was that the land should become the free communal possession of those
who wished to work it, not subject to tribute, and the child will answer
"No."...."
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/02/tell-us-what-you-really-think-tim.html#links
The US government also needs to give tax credits and preferred tax
treatment to aerospace investments.
More sensible treatment regarding the third factor of production would be
better.
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.policy/browse_frm/thread/e5efac5bf04512f7/8ec62adc32d4e7a9?lnk=gst&q=fa%24t&rnum=1&hl=en#8ec62adc32d4e7a9
Here is the sequence of events that we have gone through and will go
through;
Future opportunities exist in expanding launch infrastructure to
support large satellite launches to support solar powersats.
Lightweight, low cost, solar panel elements combined with low cost
phased array microwave - provide a first generation solar powersat. An
unmanned fully reusable multi-staged launcher built around existing
engine sets and technology, launched from adequate facilities at
sufficiently high launch rates - have the potential to reduce costs to
1% that of the space shuttle.
I wonder about trying to produce the solar panels here on Earth -- toxic
materials and impending water shortage.
A laser propelled jet has already been flown farther than Robert
Goddard flew the first liquid propelled rocket.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/about/dr_goddard.html
Another alternative. I think the more aggressive infrastructure project
I've suggested earlier in this thread is worth the cost. It would force the
issue. Variable launch costs would be so low it would be foolish not to go
all out.
Once we have laser powersats - augmenting maser powersats - we will
have the capacity to bring about a fundamental shift in the way
transport takes place on our planet - and beyond. Ballistic transport
and orbital transport has the potential to be commonplace when a
network of solar pumped lasers combines with low-cost laser powered
propulsive skins.
Still like solar chimneys if we need more electricity generating capacity
first. Or start by using lasers to power space planes during hours when
power demands aren't so high.
Powersats operating close to the solar surface, and using large lasers
and optics to beam terawatts of laser energy across the solar system -
has the potential to develop celestial bodies throughout the solar
system industrially. Such systems also support low-cost solar system
wide transport. Large optics projecting terawatts or even quadrillions
of watts interplanetary distance will be adapted to support early
interstellar probes and missions using laser light sails.
Does have a reliability advantage over M2P2. This may be necessary or more
practical when dealing with human cargo.
One use of extreme propulsion using very large quantities of solar
pumped laser photons is the movement of asteroidal bodies throughout
the solar system. A natural consequence of this capacity it to bring
a small population of rich asteroids into orbit around Earth and then
populating those asteroids with remotely controlled factories driven by
populations of workers living on Earth - to produce large quantities of
goods that are then distributed by direct deorbiting to customers on
Earth and in cislunar space.
I thin that for this purpose M2P2 is ideal, except for when the velocity
gets rather close to the point where they end up in Earth orbit, at which
time we may want to switch to a more controllable system.
.
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