Re: Vision of the three Rs: Regular, Reliable and Reusable

Just as I was despairing of ever seeing a semblance of rationality
from Fred, he suddenly gets halfway rational on us. OK.

On Mar 10, 12:04 pm, Fred J. McCall <fmcc...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

:>What do YOU propose, Rand?
:
:I propose getting a private space passenger industry going.

This is an outstanding proposal and I would love to see it. However,
it's rather like belling the cat; who's to do it (and how)?

Look at one of Rand's proposals (which admittedly assume political
will that probably isn't there now, and may never be there): the
government buys a lot of tickets, and offers them for resale. Let's
assume that the ticket price (in the initial lot, anyway) is
reasonable with respect to projected costs.

So who launches the customers for those rides? Whoever *can*. It's
not the government's place to say.

Where's
it going (passengers usually have a destination)?

This is a logistical problem to be solved by whoever can. If
launching *and* housing customers on the same craft is what works
initially, fine -- that's still a higher rate of launch, with the
economies and the accelerated learning curves that come with a higher
rate. However, with enough customers, it may be profitable for
someone to expend some number of launches to provide semi-permanent
amenities at a "space hotel", so that the craft to be orbited doesn't
have to carry the amenities load every time, and can either be
smaller, or carry more passengers. Who would provide that hotel? The
slate isn't blank, even now: there's Bigelow Aerospace.

How to get the
volume up to the point where it doesn't require a government behind
it?

Presumably, any subsidy along these lines would be based on market
projections in the first place.

:If the
:government wants to help with that by purchasing large numbers of
:tickets for resale on the market, ...

I don't see that 'helping', since once the government stops doing that
(and they will - it will be viewed as wasted money by virtually
everyone) you're dead.

We're tacitly assuming political will, so we're also assuming that
it's not regarded as wasted money by most. THAT is a stretch, I'll
admit. I'd say the subsidy could be tapered off, if profits start to
appear, and look maintainable with ever-lower subsidies. If not --
well, ditch it. The policy analysis was wrong, not much harm done.

Meanwhile, by pouring all the money into that,
it isn't being spent doing other things that might be useful.

Perhaps so (I haven't sided with any single subsidy idea; I haven't
even committed myself to the idea of subsidies). However, if there's
something we all agree on here, besides the desirability of a Vision
for Space Exploitation of some kind, it's that costs of launch to
orbit are the biggest single obstacle. To a good first approximation,
it shouldn't really matter whether you're launching lots of human
beings or lots of BBQ-FlavR pretzels -- offering subsidies for the
launch of a lot of stuff, on the assumption that costs to go to LEO
are susceptible to economies of scale in production and operation.
Natural profit-seeking among firms should also lead to R&D required to
do ever better in reducing costs.

:... or by finally getting serious about
:operationally responsive spacelift, all the better.

This one is what I'd like to see the government doing more of, rather
than wasting its money subsidizing someone's favourite 'solution'.

I don't know if ELV or RLV is right. I don't know if TSTO or SSTO is
right. I'm a fan of launching bulk mass and hardened cargo from Earth
to orbit using ground-based accelerators, but I'll be the first to
admit this is highly speculative. The arguments have gone on forever
-- so why not let markets decide, by creating a market that doesn't
really exist, if that's politically possible?

Let's get back into the 'X-plane' business and develop technologies.
Where are all the follow-on test vehicles to the stuff that was being
talked about 20 years ago?

I think in some sense, the 'X-plane' business has been supplanted by
private capital (Branson, Bezos, etc.)

Lots of people are saying 'subsidize RLV',

Yeah, but NOT ME. I've never specified *how*. I don't think anyone
should.

but in the short term (at
least) that might not be the best approach to an expanded space
presence. Expendables might be cheaper and it's establishing the
presence that drives everything else, since without it most of the
economic justification for everything else goes away.

Fine. Then take half of NASA's budget, make it available for offsets
of costs to orbit for launch firms, and let the market figure out
whether expendables are really the way to go. If the result is
dramatically lower costs to orbit, whether with expendables or RLVs,
and sustainable demand begins to materialize, taper off the
subsidies. If not, well, look at it this way: since you created only
a pool of money, you just have to drain that swamp at the end. A pool
of bodies -- government pork and large bureaucracies -- is not so
easily drained.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw

That's a funny line, but remember that Shaw was a socialist, and
that's probably what he was talking about. I'm much more of a liberal
(politically) than Rand, but in this case, we seem to be on something
like the same page about space policy.

-michael turner

.

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