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Past Perfect, Future Misleading



 
 
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  #61  
Old September 3rd 03, 05:06 PM
Pascal Bourguignon
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Default Past Perfect, Future Misleading


(Tom Merkle) writes:
Unfortunately, even a solid gold asteroid wouldn't pay for the cost of
developing a space transportation infrastructure. It'll have to be


Perhaps we should see it differently.

The point would not to be to bring back riches from space. It would
just be to LIVE there. That is, to bring men there. For this, it
should be shown that there is a better environment in space than on a
planet (for some definition of "better").

What have we the

- energy (when we're close enough to a star, let's not speak of
_deep_ space).

Earth receives only a tiny tiny bit of the energy produced by
the Sun. There is the potential to collect much more energy
in space. This means that humanity could develop as much as
it wants, collecting all the energy we need to feed and
survive.


- big chunks of rocks and minerals and CHON, easily (cost
effectively) accessed.

Earth too is a big chunk of rocks and minerals, but only a
thin peel of it is really accessible. So the interesting
resources are costly (in terms of energy) to get at. On the
contrary, in space, you can trade time for energy: with a
small push and enough time you can move asteroids wherever
you need them.


- a lot of room.

Not only (x,y,z), but also political room. In Earth, it's
quite hard to find a place where some tax collector or some
cop are not on your back. We can hope for more freedom in
space.


Now, what we don't have in space and have on Earth, is an
ecosystem. That may be considered an advantage or a penalty, depending
on the point of view and the progress of science and techniques...


Finding a gold asteroid in space would not mean that you would bring
it back down to Earth. Perhaps a few kilos, as change money when you
come down to Paris or Disney land as a tourist...

Note that already now, you can buy gold without physically possessing
it. It's kept at a bank and you have only a paper certificate of
ownership. You can ask for delivery of it at any time, but usually you
don't. If I found a gold asteroid, I would not bring it down, I would
open the First Asteroid Belt Bank -- FABB, and outsource on Earth
printing paper. With the money, I would build the launchers needed to
bring more brains and tools in space until we can be autosufficient.



--
__Pascal_Bourguignon__
http://www.informatimago.com/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Do not adjust your mind, there is a fault in reality.

  #63  
Old September 5th 03, 05:05 AM
Kevin Willoughby
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Default Past Perfect, Future Misleading

In article , "Greg D. Moore
\(Strider\)" says...
Actually I've got this idea for building an atomic powered digger and taking
it to the South Pole.

I think my idea would Swiftly solve the problem.


Sigh... I must be getting old.

I not only got the joke, but a couple of years ago, I gave the books to
my then proto-literate nephew.
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

Imagine that, a FROG ON-OFF switch, hardly the work
for test pilots. -- Mike Collins

  #64  
Old September 5th 03, 07:30 PM
Sander Vesik
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Default Past Perfect, Future Misleading

In sci.space.policy Ralph Nesbitt wrote:

Who picked up/covered Devolpment Cost Write Offs? IRC the British & French
Gouvernments. "Botom line The Concord Service was "Government Subsidized".
Ralph Nesbitt


Which of the two concepts:
* write-offs
* subsidy

is the one you don't understand?

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

  #65  
Old September 6th 03, 03:35 AM
Ralph Nesbitt
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Default Past Perfect, Future Misleading


"Sander Vesik" wrote in message
...
In sci.space.policy Ralph Nesbitt wrote:

Who picked up/covered Devolpment Cost Write Offs? IRC the British &

French
Gouvernments. "Botom line The Concord Service was "Government

Subsidized".
Ralph Nesbitt


Which of the two concepts:
* write-offs
* subsidy

is the one you don't understand?

--

When a gouvernment funds devolpment costs of a project. Then "Swallows
Devolpment Costs" by writeing them off, reduceing unit costs to "Private
Customers" so a "Operational Profit" can be shown, constitutes a "Subsidy"
IMHO.
Ralph Nesbitt
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++


  #66  
Old September 7th 03, 03:50 PM
Pascal Bourguignon
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Default Past Perfect, Future Misleading


Sander Vesik writes:
In sci.space.policy jimmydevice wrote:
kevin wrote:

In article ,
says...

Concorde -never- cut it. It's a perfect example of creating a service
without looking into the market for it.


Concorde *did* show an operational profit for many years. People were
willing to pay for speed, service, and snob-appeal.

R&D expenses had to be written-off. It was expensive to design and
build. That's not uncommon in systems that advance the state of the art.

It took a while to learn how to operate and market Concorde effectively.
Changing times ended her career. But in between, she flew profitably.

Did it ever make back it's initial development investment?
Was it a Rah-Rah we beat the US, screw the UK and French taxpayers?


It did not end up brining back the development money, largely because
the production was halted really early on. It was not designed or
intended to not bring the money back - it was just not designed to
bring it back over just slightly more than 60 planes.


Concorde was not profitable. But what we gained with Concorde, was a
technical and an organizational expertize that has been put in very
profitable work in AirBus.

Had there been no Concorde, an European corporation like Airbus would
not have been competing and beating Boeing.

--
__Pascal_Bourguignon__
http://www.informatimago.com/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Do not adjust your mind, there is a fault in reality.

  #67  
Old September 8th 03, 11:00 PM
Jim Kingdon
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Default Past Perfect, Future Misleading

ISTR somebody mentioning a paper, about three or so years back, that
took these effects into account, and concluded that such an enterprise
would still be profitable under reasonable assumption (even about the
cost of getting to the asteroid etc.) Henry?


Here are some cites which were posted to usenet a few years ago.
These are also at http://www.panix.com/~kingdon/space/mining.html
along with a few online links.

* M. McKay, D. McKay, M. Duke, eds., Space Resources:Materials,
NASA SP-509, v. 3, US GPO, 1992 (P. 111-120 cover asteroid
mining).
* J. Lewis, T. Jones, W. Farrand, "Carbonyl Extraction of Lunar
and Asteroidal Metals", Engineering, Construction, and
Operations in Space (eds. Johnson & Wetzel),
p. 111-118. American Society of Civil Engineers, New York, 1988
* J. Lewis, M. Mathhews, M. Guerrieri, eds., Resources of
Near-Earth Space, U. of Arizona Press, Tuscon, 1993. (Too many
good articles in this one to list).
* J. Kargel, "Metalliferous Asteroids as potential sources of
precious metals", Journal of Geophysical Research, v. 99, no
E10, p. 21129-21141, October 25, 1994. (The first attempt I've
seen at developing price elasticity curves for raw materials)
* C. Meinel has a nice article from the 1985 IEEE EASCON on mass
payback for various asteroidal return scenarios.
* Lewis and Lewis, Space Resources: Breaking the Bonds of
Earth. (Don't have a complete citation for this).

  #68  
Old September 11th 03, 07:25 PM
Rand Simberg
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Default Past Perfect, Future Misleading

On Fri, 5 Sep 2003 12:30:35 CST, in a place far, far away, Sander
Vesik made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In sci.space.policy Ralph Nesbitt wrote:

Who picked up/covered Devolpment Cost Write Offs? IRC the British & French
Gouvernments. "Botom line The Concord Service was "Government Subsidized".
Ralph Nesbitt


Which of the two concepts:
* write-offs
* subsidy

is the one you don't understand?


When the government writes off the development costs, it constitutes a
subsidy.

--
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:

 




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