: Joe Strout
: - Flight rate. So far, about 500 humans have ever been in space.
: Virgin Galactic plans to fly about 500 passengers per year. Manned
: space launches currently happen at a rate of about half a dozen
: (launches, not people) per year; Virgin will be flying more than once
: per week. And of course, VG will not be the only game in town; Space
: Adventures also seems pretty credible to me in their plans for
: suborbital tourism. So in a few years, we're looking at a flight rate
: orders of magnitude higher than what we have now. Even if this is
: suborbital rather than orbital, this will result in a much faster
: feedback & revision cycle, and so faster progress.

My problelm with this one is that you can revise and improve suborbital
flight all you want, and you're still no farther along than the X15 was,
in terms of basic capability. Is there some reason to think this will
spill over to orbtial capability?

: - Once the cold war rivalry as justification for space development
: evaporated, the space community seized on science as its raison
: d'etre. This was a mistake; space science is almost entirely pure
: research, and there isn't much money in that (in the short term
: anyway);

My problem with this is that there has been lots of money to be made for
less costly launch capability for some time. Slots for comm satellites,
weather satellites, mapping satellites, and on and on. Projects like
Iridium might have been profitable if the costs of keeping the satellites
up and supplying more were less. So it seems to me there's been economic
motive for a long time, and not much has come of it. It is possible that
governments block progress, such as insisting that the Shuttle program
can and should do everything. But even so, if somebody else could launch
for a lower price, I don't think they'd have problems getting customers
away from the Shuttle.


Note: I'm wearing my skeptical hat here. I *do* see these points,
and agree that that they are positive. I am not merely dismissing
them, or even attempting to "refute" them. I'm just not very optimistic
on how much they will accelerate progress.


Wayne Throop http://sheol.org/throopw