top ten reasons there'll be faster progress

I don't see this discussed in-group recently; refer me if I missed it.
In a crossposted thread, it was mentined

From: Joe Strout
Message-ID:
I have a design I've slowly been fleshing out for a habitat of 2000
people (about 2/3 of whom would be tourists at any given point in
time), and I wouldn't be surprised to see something like that within
30 years. I'm obviously assuming here that progress in the next 30
years will be substantially faster than in the last 30 -- but there
are lots of good reasons for thinking that may be the case.

What are a few of these reasons?


Wayne Throop http://sheol.org/throopw

In article , (Wayne Throop)
wrote:

I'm obviously assuming here that progress in the next 30
years will be substantially faster than in the last 30 -- but there
are lots of good reasons for thinking that may be the case.

What are a few of these reasons?

Well, for starters, this is almost always the nature of technological
progress. Check out any of Kurzweil's work, for example [1]; he has
plotted quantitative progress over time on a wide variety of
technologies, and finds an exponential curve again and again. The
illusion of linear progress is a result of the fact that, on the very
short timescale at which our attention generally operates, an
exponential curve is approximately linear. But that approximation
quickly breaks down at longer time scales.

Next, let's consider all the things that were being done wrong for the
last 30 years, which are finally starting to change:

- Space was developed as a massively wasteful government program;
without any tangible benefits, such programs are politically
unsustainable, leading to the stagnation we have seen. Now, we are
seeing substantial progress being made on a commercial basis (e.g. Zero
Gravity, Virgin Galactic, SpaceX), and this is far more likely to be
self-sustaining, leading to progress.

- 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); moreover,
similar amounts of pure research could be done on the ground for far
less money, making every space project a political battle. Now space is
being developed for more mundane but far more profitable purposes, like
space tourism. The only politics involved here is in regulation, and
that seems to be going reasonably well so far.

- 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.

- Advances in related technologies. Electronics, GPS, avionics, and
other technologies are now available in forms that were science fiction
30 years ago. They're not only dramatically more capable, but
dramatically cheaper, too. These make up a substantial fraction of the
cost of a spacecraft, even if not the weight, and advances is these
should drive the overall cost down too.

Anybody want to add to this list?

Best,
- Joe

[1] http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/a...ml?printable=1

: 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

On Mon, 26 Jun 2006 18:46:11 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Wayne Throop) made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

: 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?

Yes.

Suborbital will gradually increase its speed and altitude to the point
that it becomes orbital, in a more natural progression than occurred
with the unnatural jump to Apollo, which was a cost-is-no-object
response to the needs of the Cold War.

: - 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.

Not really. For the most part, launch costs were not significant
drivers of those projects to demand lower ones.

Projects like
Iridium might have been profitable if the costs of keeping the satellites
up and supplying more were less.

Even they weren't willing to spend enough money on the necessary
development to lower the cost of launch, and they didn't provide
enough market to do so. So far, there's only one clear market that
could, and doesn't require ancillary technology development--people
who want to go and are willing to pay their own money for the
opportunity.

h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

:On Mon, 26 Jun 2006 18:46:11 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Wayne Throop) made the phosphor on my monitor glow
:in such a way as to indicate that:
:
:: 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?
:
:Suborbital will gradually increase its speed and altitude to the point
:that it becomes orbital, in a more natural progression than occurred
:with the unnatural jump to Apollo, which was a cost-is-no-object
:response to the needs of the Cold War.

Why will that happen? The jump from suborbital to orbital is a big
step requiring correspondingly big investment. I'd love to see it but
it doesn't seem to me that we're talking about the near-term future
here.

:Projects like
:Iridium might have been profitable if the costs of keeping the satellites
:up and supplying more were less.
:
:Even they weren't willing to spend enough money on the necessary
:development to lower the cost of launch, and they didn't provide
:enough market to do so. So far, there's only one clear market that
:could, and doesn't require ancillary technology development--people
:who want to go and are willing to pay their own money for the
pportunity.

Again, I'd love to see it. I've been pleasantly surprised at the
number responding for a suborbital trip (and two week luxury resort
vacation, which may have a bit to do with it), but it seems to me that
number will fall rapidly at the increasing price of actually getting
to orbit unless there's a similar luxury resort to stay in once they
get there.

--
"We come into the world and take our chances.
Fate is just the weight of circumstances.
That's the way that Lady Luck dances.
Roll the bones...."
-- "Roll The Bones", Rush

In article , (Wayne Throop)
wrote:

: 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.

No, that's not the case. Improving suborbital flight could mean many
things, I suppose, including reducing cost and improving reliability (I
might argue, for example, that SS1 is already well beyond the X-15 in
terms of reliability, though there's certainly room for lively debate on
that one).

But when you consider what direction the market forces are likely to
push, it's almost certainly going to be for higher, faster, longer
microgravity flight profiles. And continued revision and improvement in
this direction leads directly (yet incrementally) to orbital flight. So
you can't "improve suborbital flight all you want" and be no further
than the X-15; at some point you've improved it well past the X-15 and
into the orbital realm.

Is there some reason to think this will spill over to orbtial capability?

There's the direct incremental improvement noted above. In addition,
many of the problems faced by suborbital craft are similar or the same
as those faced by orbital craft: the need for a reaction control system,
for example. Also cabin pressurization, non-airbreathing engines, all
components being rated for use in space, TPS (though admittedly to a
much lesser degree, and somewhat depending on other craft parameters),
and so on. A high flight rate, with accompanying rapid progress on
these fronts, certainly makes the overall problem of building an orbiter
easier, don't you agree?

: - 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.

Yes, the market has been there, but it hasn't been recognized until
recently. Moreover, the very idea that private companies could run
their own space program was met with nothing but giggles until about 5
years ago. The giggle factor is gone, making investment more possible;
and then of course we have the modern angels (Munsk, Bezos, etc.)
serious about doing it themselves.

Slots for comm satellites,
weather satellites, mapping satellites, and on and on.

Tosh. These are a small market, and don't demand a high flight rate,
and have been supplied mainly by government launchers. Sure, they would
have been better off with cheaper launches -- and this is an angle
SpaceX is taking even today -- but the existing expensive launches were
good enough; these customers were not price-sensitive, and the volume
was too low to drive much in the way of real competition.

Human passengers, in contrast, will (after the early adopters) be rather
price-sensitive, and will be flying in high enough volume to drive
competition. This is a completely different sort of market. Groping
for analogy here, consider the ocean liner industry as compared to the
auto industry. The latter advances much faster.

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.

Andrew Beal might disagree, but I realize that opinions differ on
exactly what went wrong there. Still, I don't think that's the key
point; the key point is that satellites are not the right market for
driving any real progress.

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.

Sure, you're arguing in a rational, reasoned manner. I certainly have
no complaint with that -- indeed, this newsgroup could use a lot more of
it!

Best,
- Joe

Joe Strout wrote:

No, that's not the case. Improving suborbital flight could mean many
things, I suppose, including reducing cost and improving reliability (I
might argue, for example, that SS1 is already well beyond the X-15 in
terms of reliability, though there's certainly room for lively debate on
that one).

But when you consider what direction the market forces are likely to
push, it's almost certainly going to be for higher, faster, longer
microgravity flight profiles. And continued revision and improvement in
this direction leads directly (yet incrementally) to orbital flight. So
you can't "improve suborbital flight all you want" and be no further
than the X-15; at some point you've improved it well past the X-15 and
into the orbital realm.

Indeed, both the economics and the physics dictate this. The longer
the suborbital flight the longer the purchased experience, with very
little add-on cost for the provider; hence the greater the profit to
the provider because a longer experience can be sold for more than a
shorter one. But physically speaking, a suborbital flight can only be
lengthened so far until it is an orbital flight. And an orbital flight
can be sustained indefinitely.

This applies to passenger transportation at least as much as to
tourism. A short suborbital flight offers few if any advantages over
ordinary air travel; a long one can get passengers to their destination
faster than any atmospheric airliner. And as we construct more manned
facilities in space, a sufficiently fast flight can put passengers in
orbit. (There is already a potential market involved handling
personnel and cargo transfers with the ISS).

There's the direct incremental improvement noted above. In addition,
many of the problems faced by suborbital craft are similar or the same
as those faced by orbital craft: the need for a reaction control system,
for example. Also cabin pressurization, non-airbreathing engines, all
components being rated for use in space, TPS (though admittedly to a
much lesser degree, and somewhat depending on other craft parameters),
and so on. A high flight rate, with accompanying rapid progress on
these fronts, certainly makes the overall problem of building an orbiter
easier, don't you agree?

Almost all the technical problems are identical. The main difference
is the duration of the required life support systems.

My problem with this is that there has been lots of money to be made for
less costly launch capability for some time.

Yes, the market has been there, but it hasn't been recognized until
recently. Moreover, the very idea that private companies could run
their own space program was met with nothing but giggles until about 5
years ago. The giggle factor is gone, making investment more possible;
and then of course we have the modern angels (Munsk, Bezos, etc.)
serious about doing it themselves.

One cultural change has been that the generation of bright kids who
grew up reading science fiction and watching the early space program in
the 1950's and 1960's now has some members who are old enough to
occupy top positions in large corporations. This was something I long
expected, and am happy to have lived long enough to see realized.

Slots for comm satellites,
weather satellites, mapping satellites, and on and on.

Tosh. These are a small market, and don't demand a high flight rate,
and have been supplied mainly by government launchers. Sure, they would
have been better off with cheaper launches -- and this is an angle
SpaceX is taking even today -- but the existing expensive launches were
good enough; these customers were not price-sensitive, and the volume
was too low to drive much in the way of real competition.

Human passengers, in contrast, will (after the early adopters) be rather
price-sensitive, and will be flying in high enough volume to drive
competition. This is a completely different sort of market. Groping
for analogy here, consider the ocean liner industry as compared to the
auto industry. The latter advances much faster.

Very good point.

I'll add to this that, once one has private orbital flight, one can
have private space stations and there is then a market for satellite
_maintenance_. Once there is infrastructure in orbit, it becomes
cheaper to repair malfunctioning satellites than to launch
replacements.

Sincerely Yours,
Jordan

In article , Wayne Throop wrote:
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?

No and yes.

Personally, I am skeptical of the argument that suborbital incrementally
grows to orbital, because I don't see enough market for the intermediate
steps. You don't gradually improve suborbital vehicles to make orbital
ones -- it's a substantial jump up in technology.

*However*, the main barriers here *ARE NOT TECHNICAL*. Suborbital *does*
spill over quite directly to orbital in areas like technical credibility
of the company, financial credibility of the industry, and regulatory
experience. And those are bigger problems than the technical issues.

Moreover, substantial suborbital operations will create the beginnings of
a supplier base for commercially-priced (as opposed to government-priced)
engines, guidance, materials, safety systems, etc. That will make it a
good deal easier to *build* an orbital vehicle, even if the design has to
be entirely new.

People who claim that suborbital isn't a useful stepping stone to orbital
are demonstrating that they don't understand where the real obstacles lie.
Typically this happens because they're thinking of commercial spaceflight
as a minor variation on cost-is-no-object government spaceflight, where
technical problems often do dominate, and don't realize that commercial
spaceflight is *different*.

My problem with this is that there has been lots of money to be made for
less costly launch capability for some time.

Not really. When you think about it, most current launch customers are
people who don't care very much about launch costs. Considering how high
launch costs are, how could it be otherwise?!?

Comsats are the only high-volume commercial launch users, and comsat
project costs are often dominated by things like network setup. (Only a
small fraction of Iridium's price tag, for example, was launches.) This
makes them intensely conservative customers, almost as risk-averse as
NASA. They're *not* interested in taking risks on new launchers -- launch
costs simply aren't important enough to them to take a chance on having
their plans massively disrupted by losing a satellite unnecessarily.

(The one borderline exception, for a while, was Teledesic, which was
simply going to be launching so *many* satellites that they might really
care about launch cost. But their network progressively evolved toward
fewer satellites... partly because they were trying to reduce the risks
involved in depending on hypothetical cheap launch suppliers!)

Almost all the other customers are government, where launcher choice is
dominated by politics, not cost... and where existing large competitors
already have a well-greased inside track.

Study after study has concluded that the market doesn't get a lot bigger
until costs are a *lot* lower. This is why the Big Boys aren't much
interested in lowering launch costs -- all it would do is reduce their
revenue from their existing launch activities. More subtly, it means that
if your launch costs are only mildly lower, the only way you get lots of
customers is to take most of them away from the Big Boys... which for a
startup is living dangerously, to put it politely.

...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.

Uh, the shuttle hasn't been in the commercial launch business for 20 years
now. Most of its customers (all of them, now) are NASA's own payloads,
which would not get moved onto a commercial vehicle even if it was coated
with antigravity paint.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

(Henry Spencer) wrote:

Personally, I am skeptical of the argument that suborbital incrementally
grows to orbital, because I don't see enough market for the intermediate
steps. You don't gradually improve suborbital vehicles to make orbital
ones -- it's a substantial jump up in technology.

I think thermal protection for re-entry is a good candidate for such
incremental improvement. Making higher and longer suborbital flights
requires better TPS. At some point it'll be good enough for re-entry
from orbital velocity. Then the only significant technical difference
is propulsion.

In article ,
(Henry Spencer) wrote:

Personally, I am skeptical of the argument that suborbital incrementally
grows to orbital, because I don't see enough market for the intermediate
steps. You don't gradually improve suborbital vehicles to make orbital
ones -- it's a substantial jump up in technology.

But what about the point that, in a competitive market, those who offer
a longer microgravity time are offering a better product? If company A
gives you 5 minutes of weightlessness for $1X, and company B gives you
10 minutes of weightlessness for $1.5X, then many customers would prefer
to fly company B, assuming they have $1.5X available, I would think.

But maybe I'm making an assumption here, which is that the flight
profile needed to get a longer hang time must necessarily evolve towards
an orbital profile. I suppose that, in principle, you could instead
just throw yourself higher straight up, without accelerating
horizontally. My intuition is that that would be a stupid approach,
since (1) it would mean a much hotter reentry, and (2) you're not taking
advantage of the curvature of the Earth to increase your hang time. But
that's just intuition; perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me can
chime in on this point.

*However*, the main barriers here *ARE NOT TECHNICAL*. Suborbital *does*
spill over quite directly to orbital in areas like technical credibility
of the company, financial credibility of the industry, and regulatory
experience. And those are bigger problems than the technical issues.

Yes, that's a very valid point I had quite overlooked.

Best,
- Joe