On Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:55:27 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote, in part:

There are many companies with rational reasons to have personnel flown
to the moon. What's lacking are companies that would be willing to do
it as expensively as the use of a CEV would require.

That's quite correct. It is absolutely true, every word of it.

However: just as Shenzou VI would not be out of the Earth's gravity if
it had a slightly higher orbit...

are you claiming that there are ways, absent the development of
far-future technologies such as a space elevator (or non-Newtonian
propulsion!), to send personnel to the moon at prices that would be
rational for even a *few* private companies to take advantage of?

Of course, looking at prices in my local department store... if it
weren't for the effects of the balance of payments deficit, perhaps the
U.S. could just buy Shenzou rockets from China!

Or, given NAFTA... Hecho en Mexico, anyone?

On the other hand, I think that it is possible to launch *small* rockets
quite inexpensively. On the Astronautix site, for example, the low cost
of the German V-2 is cited.

What with all the advances in microelectronics and medical science,
perhaps in a few decades people will be able to "upload" themselves into
a matchbox-sized mass of electronics. We could call it the Henry
Wadsworth Akeley method of space travel.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html
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