Making money (X-Prize)

(John Ordover) :

John Carmack
www.armadilloaerospace.com

But isnt' that a lot less than the X-Prize would require? And how,
exactly would it be profitable? I'll take the bet, but you'll have to
turn a profit to win.

John Ordover, you are an idiot. When John Carmack is finished reaching his
goals he will have a working personal rocket that can take him and others to
the edge of space itself. You on the otherhand will still be stuck in the
dirt talking about winning a bet because he did not do it by 2004.

I would say between winning the bet or getting a flight on John's rocket 99%
of the readers of this usenet group will op for the rocket. As for the
x-prize that is just a way to make a profit fast, profit is always profit and
John's long term plans include making a profit in the future without winning
the x-prize.

Or do you think you know more about how to make money than John Carmack?

Earl Colby Pottinger

--
I make public email sent to me! Hydrogen Peroxide Rockets, OpenBeos,
SerialTransfer 3.0, RAMDISK, BoatBuilding, DIY TabletPC. What happened to
the time? http://webhome.idirect.com/~earlcp

Earl Colby Pottinger wrote:

Or do you think you know more about how to make money than John
Carmack?

Be careful making arguments of this type, Earl. Many thought that
Rotary Rocket, Beal Aerospace, and Teledesic were sure things because
wealthy men with impressive track records for making money such as
Walt Anderson, Andrew Beal, and Bill Gates were investing in them.
It's still the same old argument from authority fallacy.

Jim Davis

Earl Colby Pottinger wrote in message ...
Jim Davis :

Earl Colby Pottinger wrote:

Or do you think you know more about how to make money than John
Carmack?

Be careful making arguments of this type, Earl. Many thought that
Rotary Rocket, Beal Aerospace, and Teledesic were sure things because
wealthy men with impressive track records for making money such as
Walt Anderson, Andrew Beal, and Bill Gates were investing in them.
It's still the same old argument from authority fallacy.

Jim Davis

While I understand the warning, and I don't think making a profit is a sure
thing for John Carmack, I was really interested in John Ordover's answer on
wether he thought he knew more about how to make money than JC.

I know that if JC and JO were to ask for investment money in a new business
that I rather place my money with JC. Afterall JO would do a business plan
based on the idea that the competition will never come up with a better
product in the future because they have not already done so today.

Earl Colby Pottinger

Don't bank too heavily on my business sense. I never characterize
myself as an entrepeneur, and I don't strive to be a captain of
industry. The odds are good that I will build something that works,
and that I will do it for a lot less money than most people think is
possible, but my business plan isn't much more than a hazy "This will
be really neat, and I think it will turn out inexpensive enough that
other people will agree and be willing to pay for it."

I do make a fair amount of money like that in software, but some
skepticism is warranted about my aerospace efforts.

John Carmack
www.armadilloaerospace.com

Don't bank too heavily on my business sense. I never characterize
myself as an entrepeneur, and I don't strive to be a captain of
industry. The odds are good that I will build something that works,
and that I will do it for a lot less money than most people think is
possible, but my business plan isn't much more than a hazy "This will
be really neat, and I think it will turn out inexpensive enough that
other people will agree and be willing to pay for it."

I do make a fair amount of money like that in software, but some
skepticism is warranted about my aerospace efforts.

John Carmack
www.armadilloaerospace.com

Hey, and like I said, I wish you nothing but success. One of the best
ways to make lots of money is to do something that everyone else
thinks isn't possible. I'm just in the "isn't possible" camp right
now because as pointed out above, the best laid plans....

I'm curious, though, as to what exactly the people you forsee agreeing
and be willing to pay for it will be buying.

(John Ordover) wrote in message . com...
Don't bank too heavily on my business sense. I never characterize
myself as an entrepeneur, and I don't strive to be a captain of
industry. The odds are good that I will build something that works,
and that I will do it for a lot less money than most people think is
possible, but my business plan isn't much more than a hazy "This will
be really neat, and I think it will turn out inexpensive enough that
other people will agree and be willing to pay for it."

I do make a fair amount of money like that in software, but some
skepticism is warranted about my aerospace efforts.

John Carmack
www.armadilloaerospace.com

Hey, and like I said, I wish you nothing but success. One of the best
ways to make lots of money is to do something that everyone else
thinks isn't possible. I'm just in the "isn't possible" camp right
now because as pointed out above, the best laid plans....

I'm curious, though, as to what exactly the people you forsee agreeing
and be willing to pay for it will be buying.

It is often difficult for people to believe there is a market for
things that they wouldn't personally pay for, but that doesn't
necessarily mean that they don't exist. The suborbital tourism market
is just paying a lot of money for a ride on the worlds biggest roller
coaster, which isn't going to have mass-market appeal, but there are
positively a number of people that want to do it. Space Adventures
has non refundable deposits from several dozen people, even though
there is no actual vehicle in sight to fly on. I probably could have
been convinced to take the ride at that price before I got married. I
spent nearly a million dollars on a Ferrari F50 that I added
turbochargers to, so several hundred thousand dollars of that is up in
smoke -- people really do throw away six figure sums on non-defensible
things. I'm only a relatively low-grade millionaire, but rather to my
surprise, I know two people that have seriously considered spending
eight figures on a Tito flight.

I think the Futuron study that predicted tens of thousands of
suborbital passengers a year after some price reductions is extremely
unlikely, but I do think that there will be 500+ people willing to pay
the $100k introductory price for the cachet of being one of the first
thousand humans to reach space. With another generation of vehicle
evolution, the price can start coming down significantly. With
sensible technical choices, a profitable business can be operated at
$10k per person to 100km. The cachet will wear off, but it will
probably settle down to a steady business at the lower prices. LOTS
of people blow $10k on vacations.

Of course, orbital is where the real interesting things will happen,
but bootstrapping and evolving towards that will result in a better
solution than just throwing $100M+ at the problem from a standing
start.

Over the last couple years, I have gotten the distinct impression that
there is a lot of dormant popular interest in space that will come to
the surface when interesting things actually start happening. There
have been many occasions when someone hears that I am working on
rockets, and over the span of five minutes you can see walls of
disbelief crumbling down and a little twinkle appear in their eyes as
they start thinking that, yes, it might actually be possible to fly on
a rocket ship.

John Carmack
www.armadilloaerospace.com

(John Carmack) :

It is often difficult for people to believe there is a market for
things that they wouldn't personally pay for, but that doesn't
necessarily mean that they don't exist. The suborbital tourism market
is just paying a lot of money for a ride on the worlds biggest roller
coaster, which isn't going to have mass-market appeal, but there are
positively a number of people that want to do it. Space Adventures
has non refundable deposits from several dozen people, even though
there is no actual vehicle in sight to fly on. I probably could have
been convinced to take the ride at that price before I got married. I
spent nearly a million dollars on a Ferrari F50 that I added
turbochargers to, so several hundred thousand dollars of that is up in
smoke -- people really do throw away six figure sums on non-defensible
things. I'm only a relatively low-grade millionaire, but rather to my
surprise, I know two people that have seriously considered spending
eight figures on a Tito flight.

The last time I was really involved in discussing how much money people would
spend I pointed out that people were very often spending 10K a person for
vacations and richer people were spending $250,000 to $3,000,000 for a week's
vacation. To such people a joyride in the $10K-$25K is the same as most
people paying the extra bucks for scuba diving (with lessons) or a helicopter
ride to have dinner on the top of a local mountain/waterfalls.

Check out:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...oogle%2BSearch

It is interesting to see someone saying that the upper limit for the space
tourist market is about $25,000 when today we know it is almost a hundred
time greater. Also the number of people supporting and claiming that you
need NASA to build a working craft, whereas today it looks like private
groups will have thier new spacecrafts flying before NASA does.

Earl Colby Pottinger

--
I make public email sent to me! Hydrogen Peroxide Rockets, OpenBeos,
SerialTransfer 3.0, RAMDISK, BoatBuilding, DIY TabletPC. What happened to
the time? http://webhome.idirect.com/~earlcp

It is often difficult for people to believe there is a market for
things that they wouldn't personally pay for, but that doesn't
necessarily mean that they don't exist.

Just to be clear, if I weren't married with a kid, I'd be one of those
people who would pay. What I've seen more often is that people go out
to sell something they, personally, are enthralled by and lose their
shirts when it turns out that their love of whatever-it-is isn't
shared by the mass-market.


The suborbital tourism market
is just paying a lot of money for a ride on the worlds biggest roller
coaster, which isn't going to have mass-market appeal, but there are
positively a number of people that want to do it.

It's encouraging to me that you correctly refer to what you hope to
offer as an amusement park ride, rather than calling it tourism as so
many others do. Where we differ, I think, is that I remain
unconvinced that the number of people who will actually, when push
comes to shove, pay a ton of money to get into a rocket to space.
People in surveys often overstate their interest when there's no real
money at issue and no real risk.


Space Adventures
has non refundable deposits from several dozen people, even though
there is no actual vehicle in sight to fly on. I probably could have
been convinced to take the ride at that price before I got married. I
spent nearly a million dollars on a Ferrari F50 that I added
turbochargers to, so several hundred thousand dollars of that is up in
smoke -- people really do throw away six figure sums on non-defensible
things. I'm only a relatively low-grade millionaire, but rather to my
surprise, I know two people that have seriously considered spending
eight figures on a Tito flight.

What kills me is that the Russians are selling rides, like good
capitlists, while we want to send only government employees on a
state-sponsered ride....


I think the Futuron study that predicted tens of thousands of
suborbital passengers a year after some price reductions is extremely
unlikely, but I do think that there will be 500+ people willing to pay
the $100k introductory price for the cachet of being one of the first
thousand humans to reach space.

But how many will do it twice? To me, the profitability of a ride
like the one you're hoping to offer is based on repeat business, not
on one ride per customer. If everyone had gone to Disneyworldland
only once, they'd be out of business by now.

With another generation of vehicle
evolution, the price can start coming down significantly. With
sensible technical choices, a profitable business can be operated at
$10k per person to 100km. The cachet will wear off, but it will
probably settle down to a steady business at the lower prices. LOTS
of people blow $10k on vacations.

But look what they get on those vacations - how many people blow $10K
on a single amusement park ride?


Over the last couple years, I have gotten the distinct impression that
there is a lot of dormant popular interest in space that will come to
the surface when interesting things actually start happening. There
have been many occasions when someone hears that I am working on
rockets, and over the span of five minutes you can see walls of
disbelief crumbling down and a little twinkle appear in their eyes as
they start thinking that, yes, it might actually be possible to fly on
a rocket ship.

See, it's this kind of thing that makes me wonder if you're
extrapolating from your obvious enthusiasm for space, rather than
accurately reflecting the market. But hey, like I keep saying, good
luck and I hope you're right.

whereas today it looks like private
groups will have thier new spacecrafts flying before NASA does.

Earl Colby Pottinger

Yes, but it also looked like that last year, and the year before, and
the year before, and the year before....

In article , John
Ordover wrote:
whereas today it looks like private
groups will have thier new spacecrafts flying before NASA does.

Yes, but it also looked like that last year, and the year before, and
the year before, and the year before....

That said, last year it didn't look like these groups were going to fly
before NASA flew *anything*, whereas now it's a vague possibility (a
delayed return-to-flight and an X-Prize team going hard out and getting
lucky... mid-late 2004 tossup.)

Not that that means anything, but it'd be an interesting thing to happen
- especially since, to much of the public, the X-Prize appeared with
Rutan's unveiling earlier this year, which might get some interesting
crossed wires on CNN [1] & its ilk. "Private American Goes From Nothing
To Space Before NASA Recovers", sort of stories.

[1] I have to be careful here. If I say Fox, I'm insulting Rand; if I
say NBC, I'm insulting JimO g

--
-Andrew Gray

Second, most groups are a lot closer than before, they are doing test flight
right now.


Most groups are -not- doing test flights. Perhaps some are, but not most.

Third, I think you are really starting to fall behind the times, at the rate
you are going you still be saying it is not possible while people are already
up there.

Keep on thinking that. If it's true, that'll be great. But it won't be.