Getting Mega Projects Done

(Tkalbfus1) wrote in message ...
The big bottleneck definitely is adequate funding. (For example, Rutan
won the X-Prize by a wide margin largely because he had money and most of
his competitors didn't.) Technical and political obstacles exist, but
most would-be launcher builders aren't even at the point of actively
confronting those. However, it's important to realize that the reason
why there isn't money is not "business" in some vague, mystical sense,
but the very high risks of investing in this field.

What you need is an excentric billionare to invest a huge chunk of money to get
the project going. Once such a billionare puts down the money and it looks like
its going to happen, there is less risk for the smaller investors who may just
jump on the band wagon. I wonder how well Scaled Composites is selling these
days? There are other risks of course, but the first risk is not having enough
money to start the project and realize a return.

Tom

The problem with this, of course, is that such billionaires are rare.
Partially because behaving like that tend to make them not be
billionaires anymore ;-}.

"David Summers" wrote in message
om...


As I said, I didn't really come here to look for investment (or even
technical help). Even if someone offered, I would definately turn
down any reasonable (to an investor) deal at this point. I am just
looking for information so that I can make sure I am working on the
correct project. As it turns out, most people here seem to agree that
now is not the time for an expensive project with huge returns, and
that waiting until the market is proven would seem to be prudent.

If someone credible wanted to offer technical help on spec, I would be
open to the idea - but I'm not really even looking for that. This
discussion was really meant to fill a gap in the information I have
seen here - to answer the question of why laser launch, gun launch,
and other high up front cost projects are not being looked at
commercially. (Just FYI, my idea has a higher launch rate, higher
payload mass, and lower technical risk. But we share the same
political, operational, and market risk - and that market risk I think
is a killer risk.)

I will point out that in this post you added a considerable amount of
information that was not present in your earlier posts. Initially it wasn't
even clear that the Mega project you were discussing was a space
launch system. You bound the problem by referring to laser launch
and gun launch systems and claiming that your idea has a higher launch
rate, higher payload mass, and lower technical risk.

I am not going to go further in the threads of this newsgroup but
you have provided enough information for me to think up questions
to ask you if I wished to proceed further.

I do have a suggestion. There has been a proposal for a
mile-long lighter-than-air ship intended to reach orbit by
use of electrical propulsion. You might look at their released
information and even possibly ask them how they expect to
get there.

I forgot the name of the company, but there was quite a bit
of discussion about it in these newsgroups and they gave a
presentation at the Space Frontier Foundation conference in
October on the Queen Mary.

The newsgroup discussion makes the concept sound a bit absurd,
in my opinion, but the presentation the company gave at the SFF
conference provided a rational basis for how they expected to be
able to do what they are proposing.

My thought after listening to their presentation and looking over
their handout was that it appears not to be ruled out by any
physical laws, but is still quite a mind-boggling engineering
concept.

Mike Walsh

http://www.zared.com/Science/Technol...e_Engineering/