High Launch Costs - Result of Physics?

(G EddieA95) wrote in message ...
Walking is cheap and
free. So was air and water, and food, while it took some effort to
obtain, was plentiful. Later on, there were products to ship home for
good money. Good luck walking to the Moon.

You can't walk to Massachusetts from England either (unless you are a crab), or
to Texas from Spain, and many decades passed before these new countries had any
wealth to return to the motherlands. That didn't prevent their colonization.

Actually, for thousands of years, you could walk from England to the
US - how do you think the Native Americans got there? You'd paddle
over to the mainland of Europe (if you don't have boats of some kind,
you can't be in England in the first place) then walk through Asia,
across the Bering Strait, and across America to Massachussets.

Colonization was practical because you could easily live off the land
and in fact had natives to trade with. There was, as I said, food,
water, and air.

John Ordover wrote:

Here's a big clue for you John, the market and the production
capacity developed side by side. As microprocessors became
more popular the fixed production costs got amortized over
larger numbers of parts, lowering the per part cost.

Of course. But nothing in space is becoming more popular - in fact,
comsats are -less- popular than they were.

This is either simple ignorance or a somewhat strange way of twisting words
around.

Comsats are providing greater and greater deliverable bandwidth and
communications circuits. The only way you can claim that comsats are
less popular than they were is if you are either referring to the current
investment market or have some figures indicating that the rate of increase
is greater for terrestial communications.

Do you have any references to back up your claim?

Mike Walsh

On Wed, 02 Jul 2003 01:42:27 GMT, in a place far, far away, Michael
Walsh made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

John Ordover wrote:

Here's a big clue for you John, the market and the production
capacity developed side by side. As microprocessors became
more popular the fixed production costs got amortized over
larger numbers of parts, lowering the per part cost.

Of course. But nothing in space is becoming more popular - in fact,
comsats are -less- popular than they were.

This is either simple ignorance

Based on all of his previous posts, you know where my vote is...

Has anyone recorded a single instance of admission of error on Mr.
Ordover's part?

He's a troll, folks. Stop indulging him.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers:

Actually, for thousands of years, you could walk from England to the
US - how do you think the Native Americans got there?

Did they start from England, or Europe for that matter?

Notice I said "Massachusetts" not "North America." Eg, I was referring to the
colonization in relatively recent history, not prehistory. You couldn't walk
the Atlantic in 1621.

You'd paddle
over to the mainland of Europe (if you don't have boats of some kind,
you can't be in England in the first place)

If the Bering Strait was dry, wouldn't the Channel also have been?

Colonization was practical because you could easily live off the land
and in fact had natives to trade with.

The natives were as likely in some places to attack you as trade with you.

There was, as I said, food,
water, and air.

And your grandkids will have the knowhow to produce these from local resources
on moon/Mars/Ceres (take your pick). It will be about as iffy as new-world
colonizers in 1621. They also had problems of adapting to new survival
conditions (as regarded climate and agriculture).

Michael Walsh wrote in message ...
Len wrote:

Michael Walsh wrote in message ...
Len wrote:


...snip...



So far what I consider "baseline knowledge" is the Space Shuttle.

...snip....

Mike Walsh

Aha. At last I realize why we disagree on cost estimates
for development of a space transport. You believe the
Space Shuttle is a good data point; I believe it is an
incredibly lousy data point from the economics point of
view.

In the context of what I was discussing when I made this particular comparison
I believe the "baseline knowledge" I was referring to was the aerothermodynamic
environment on re-entry of a winged body vehicle.

I maintain that integrating the propellant tank results in
a much more benign reentry environment as a result of much
lower planform loading. The effects, IMO, tend to compound:
lower temperatures yield lighter TPS and that leads to lower
planform loading that leads to lower temperatures, etc.

And as far as economics goes, it is a real data point. Got any others?


No. But I'd rather consider the set of data to be empty
--rather than a set containing only bad data points.

The only other ones that can be used are capsules such as Mercury, Gemini,
Apollo and Soyuz.

Which we probably both agree aren't appropriate.

The basic problem is that the only real data points are
incredibly lousy from an economics point of view.

However, if you re-read my post you should realize that wasn't
what I was describing.

OK. When it comes to Shuttle, my fuse is probably too short.

My main observation is that our relative orientation with
respect to acceptable data may explain the gap between us
on cost estimates for what may be possible. That doesn't meen
that you may not be right; moreover, you are entitled
to your opinion with respect to what are reasonable cost estimates
--the range of which are probably very unpredictable at
this time. I just hope to be somewhat convincing that the
low end of the range should not be dismissed as completely
impossible.

Mike Walsh

Best regards,
Len (Cormier)
PanAero, Inc. and Third Millennium Aerospace, Inc.
( http://www.tour2space.com )

Michael Walsh wrote:

Do you have any references to back up your claim?

What is likely is that this Ordover chap is some college undergraduate
even further down the learning curve then I was when I jumped on this
list when I was 16. He probably (almost definitely) misunderstood a
few popular consumption articles about the financial woes of Iridium
and Teledesic, and took it to mean all comsats, not understanding the
difference between satellite phones for instance, and satellite TV,
satellite radio, other forms of satellite communications, imaging
satellites, etc. I'm guessing this because of his statement about
how there aren't any applications that a satellite can do that a cell
tower can't do for less. This may be partially true for one small
niche market, but obviously false for many other markets (especially
the earth observation markets). I think he's just a clueless fool
who grabbed hold of one little piece of information and think it makes
him wiser than anyone else.

Unfortunately this is all too common these days. I guess the good
news is that there are many people who aren't this way.

~Jon

Rand Simberg wrote:

Has anyone recorded a single instance of admission of error on Mr.
Ordover's part?

To be a little bit fair, there are other non-trolls on this list who
almost never admit error. It's the patronizing tone he takes that
rankles me the most. I had a roommate just like him back in the day.

He's a troll, folks. Stop indulging him.

Fortunately, my newsserver seems to not pass along messages from
AOL users. I think this is one of the more effective troll filters
invented. At least AOLers these days don't RaNDomLy CaPItOlIZe
LeTTeRS as much as they used to......

~Jon

(G EddieA95) wrote in message ...
Actually, for thousands of years, you could walk from England to the
US - how do you think the Native Americans got there?

Did they start from England, or Europe for that matter?

Notice I said "Massachusetts" not "North America." Eg, I was referring to the
colonization in relatively recent history, not prehistory. You couldn't walk
the Atlantic in 1621.

You'd paddle
over to the mainland of Europe (if you don't have boats of some kind,
you can't be in England in the first place)

If the Bering Strait was dry, wouldn't the Channel also have been?

No, it wouldn't - the strait wasn't dry, it was frozen over.



Colonization was practical because you could easily live off the land
and in fact had natives to trade with.

The natives were as likely in some places to attack you as trade with you.

That has never, ever been true. The vast majority of human-to-human
initial contact has been peaceful and involved trade. It is only
when one set of humans takes up long-term residence that wars break
out.

You know how many times Native Americans attacked wagon trains, which
then had to pull themselves into a circle to fight them off? Never
happened once outside a movie. Instead, the NA's charged exhorbitant
tolls to float wagon trains across rivers.




There was, as I said, food,
water, and air.

And your grandkids will have the knowhow to produce these from local resources
on moon/Mars/Ceres (take your pick). It will be about as iffy as new-world
colonizers in 1621. They also had problems of adapting to new survival
conditions (as regarded climate and agriculture).

If you have to produce your own food, water, and air on a lifeless
rock you can't afford to live there - call it Ordover's Law. Please
note - I'm not saying that we -can't- do all that, I'm saying we can't
do it -affordably- because what you describe is expensive and there's
nothing there to pay back the cost.

Look, you could take a woodsmen from the outskirts of a European
village in 1500 and drop him naked in the woods of America (assuming
the weather is nice enough that he won't freeze) and he'll quickly be
able to find everything he needs to survive - plenty of air, water,
and food he'll recognize (rabbits, just off hand, deer, etc.).
America and Europe are not that diffferent. And he would very quickly
have been able to make friends with the natives and get even more
help.

The cost to the home society would have been nothing.

But I guess the important point is that we don't
need to prove anything to the Ordovers of the world.

I am exactly the kind of person you have to convince if you want
investors who would just as soon invest in cheese as space. You have
to show the short-term profit return.

You throw out terms like "infrastructure will be developed" that seem
to assume that infrastruture will appear from nowhere, at no cost, by
magic. The reality is that the infrastructure you describe is wildly
expensive, and no one wants to pay to put it in place.

I kinda look forward to the day sometime soon when we can put Ordover's
quotes up next to the "geniuses" that said that heavier than air flight,
rocketry, and personal computers were either impossible or useless.


You may have a very long wait. I've been waiting for Moon
exploitation on some kind of grand scale since it was first suggested
in 1969. Since then, we've done -nothing- to move that forward, and
aren't doing so now. In the 70s we had a Mars lander and a space
station. In the 21st Century we have a.... couple more Mars landers
and a Space Station. No progress in -decades- toward exploiting the
Moon.

Again, what is the short-term, immediate payback that will interest
private investment in the large space structures you suggest? Be more
specific than "not as hard as Ordover thinks." What -exactly- is the
profit making plan - 100% profit within five years - that you will wow
investors with so they'll put up the money for the intermediate
stages?

Name one product of which we are short of on Earth that can be more
cheaply made on the Moon, and sold at a great profit.