High Launch Costs - Result of Physics?

John Ordover wrote:

(Alan Anderson) wrote in message ...
(John Ordover) wrote:

...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.

Do you know what Clementine did?

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.

Here are two I can think of without even trying:

Whole-hemisphere views of Earth with the unaided eye.

Which will grow dull, like everything else, in a day or so. How long
can you stare at the Grand Canyon?

How can you stare at the Grand Canyon without GOING THERE?

Low gravity (bringing with it the possibility of Daedelus-style flight,
among other things).

You can do that now, here on Earth, in a hang glider or ultralight
aircraft, unless you think that flapping your arms is somehow a draw.

Jonathan Goff wrote:

Dick,

My newsreader automatically tosses stuff from AOLers (not
a bad troll-filter eh?), but I'll respond to both your
comments and Ordover's in the same message.

Dick Morris wrote:

John Ordover wrote:

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.

No, actually you're not. First off, are you a qualified investor?
Do you have assets over $1M? Second off, of the pool of qualified
investors, there is a subpool of people interested in space. You
obviously don't fit into that pool, as you think that doing anything
economic in space is impossible. It wouldn't matter if I had a
contract signed in hand for $100M, you wouldn't believe me. Other
investors in the subgroup I'd be looking at are more open minded.
I still will have to show short-term profit return to them, but it
is actually not that tough to come up with space applications with
short term profitability. Unlike what you think. So, no people
like you don't matter too much when it comes to getting investment
capital.

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.

Actually, the infrastructure I'm envisioning is developed in stage,
with each (or almost every) step being a self-sustaining short-term
return stage. It does cost money, and it does take time, but it
isn't impossible, doesn't require magic, and doesn't have to be wildly
expensive. I'm hoping that other profit seeking ventures will beat
me to those punches, as I find some of the intermediate steps to be
outside my primary areas of interest, but if nobody else has succeeded
by the time I'm ready to entery the market, then I'll go after them
myself. Space can actually be rather profitable actually.

I don't believe that there is a short-term profit potential in space
that would justify any substantial private sector investment. It will
require billions of dollars to develop an RLV large enough to handle
existing markets, and with low enough recurring costs to develop new
markets.

This is where I disagree. Sure, a large RLV that can meet everyones'
needs may take billions of dollars to develop, but you are leaving
out several other possibilities, and especially several other steps
between here and there that can be taken. First off, payloads don't
have to be as big as they currently are. If you develop some simple
on-orbit infrastructure (maybe not much more complicated than a
SpaceHab module with some solar panels, a docking port, some radiators,
some commo equipment, some station-keeping system, and an assembly
truss. No need to be horribly expensive, most of those are almost
OTS components. Then, you launch the satellites on smaller RLVs in
two-three pieces. Or launch them on lower cost ELVs (or semi-RLVs like
the SpaceX Falcon). Instead of having folding solar arrays, launch
them rigid on separate launches, and have it put together on orbit.

I didn't necessarily mean large enough to handle ALL existing payloads,
just the majority, like communications satellites and scientific
spacecraft. A new vehicle has got to be targeted to some established
markets to support early operations if it's going to have much of a
chance of developing new markets. It's going to be hard enough without
trying to build everything up from scratch. A TSTO VTOL RLV big enough
to do that will require at least several billion, IMHSWAG.

I agree with the "simple on-orbit infrastructure" idea, though maybe not
for the same reason. We need to have a safe haven in orbit for all the
orbits that manned spacecraft would normally use. If a problem develops
with your return vehicle, you can stay there for months if need be until
the problem is resolved or a rescue can be mounted. Any spare payload
capacity can be used to carry spares and consumables to the safe haven.

So, yes if you redesign the shuttle, it is going to be expensive,
but if you design a more rational RLV, and combine it with a simple
staging base, you can get it done for far less than billions of
dollars. In fact, some of the early work could be done without
the need for orbital infrastructure at all (ala Dave Salt).

Yes. An RLV able to launch comsats (one at a time) would be much
smaller than the Shuttle, especially if it were a relatively simple,
VTOL design.

The only potential market large enough to make that kind of
investment pay off is LEO tourism, and with exactly 2 customers through
the gate so far I don't blame anyone for being sceptical about the size
of the potential market. I personally own several thousand shares of
Boeing stock, but I have not invested a single red cent in any start-up
launch vehicle or X-Prize company, and don't intend to.

Well, that's your bias. If I was working for Boeing I wouldn't
likely be able to see anything but my company's way of doing
things as working either. You might be right, but I don't think
you are, and I have good reason to disagree.

You might be surprised at some of the things I have said to some of our
Space Division folks. It just drives me ballistic when I hear somebody
say we should keep the Shuttle flying another 30 years. I've threatened
to file a stockholder resolution, if it would do any good.

As for space tourism, that 2 is likely to expand a lot over the
next year. And if costs can go down, the number of interested
people will go up. I've been looking at a near term system that
could put people up into orbit for around $5M/person. The costs
would likely go down even further over time. Development costs
would be under $100M, likely in the ballpark of $20-50M (excluding
test flights). So, I'm not quite as skeptical as you are. We'll
just see who was more accurate in their assesment. You definitely
have history on your side.

Actually I'm an optimist as far as space tourism is concerned. If I
were Bill Gates I would be selling tickets right now, and making tons of
money.

I think the government is going to have to take the first step by
developing a true RLV, and by making it as simple and reliable as
possible to keep support costs to a minimum. After that, I think you
will be shocked at how quickly things develop. Unfortunately, I see
little evidence that NASA is interested in doing any such thing in the
forseeable future.

Which is exactly the problem. I don't think the government is going
to do it, so that just leaves it up to us to use our creativity and
find another way of doing it. I think it'll be tough but doable.

People with enough sense to make a lot of money are not likely to invest
in something that is tough just because some of us say it's do-able.
Those are not the words they want to hear. We're basically stuck between
the devil and the deep blue sea.

~Jon

John Ordover wrote:

I don't believe that there is a short-term profit potential in space
that would justify any substantial private sector investment. It will
require billions of dollars to develop an RLV large enough to handle
existing markets, and with low enough recurring costs to develop new
markets. The only potential market large enough to make that kind of
investment pay off is LEO tourism, and with exactly 2 customers through
the gate so far I don't blame anyone for being sceptical about the size
of the potential market. I personally own several thousand shares of
Boeing stock, but I have not invested a single red cent in any start-up
launch vehicle or X-Prize company, and don't intend to.

Thank you - I agree, of course. However, I own 100 of Space
Development, because it cost me only 50 bucks so what the heck. I
think that's 100 more shares in a space-oriented company than most of
the "there's gold in them thar space" people chiming in here have.


I think the government is going to have to take the first step by
developing a true RLV, and by making it as simple and reliable as
possible to keep support costs to a minimum. After that, I think you
will be shocked at how quickly things develop. Unfortunately, I see
little evidence that NASA is interested in doing any such thing in the
forseeable future. NASA, for the last 30+ years, has been fixated on
pushing the technology envelope and on doing things the hard way in
order to "justify" a lot of technology development to make more work for
their research centers. That approach virtually guarantees high costs
and low reliability. In the case of NASP and X-33, it guaranteed
outright failure.

See, this is where we differ. IMHO, NASA is, and pretty much always
has been, an R&D outfit. They come up with stuff, then let the
private sector jump in where and when it's intersted, which the
private sector has done repeatedly with tech either developed by NASA
or that NASA has shown the utility of. They R&D's moon landing and
return technology, proved the concept, then moved on to other things,
as they should. Private industry saw no point in going to the Moon,
picked up the ancillary tech where it could, and moved on to other
things. If Boeing or GE or Microsoft saw a profit potential in going
ot the Moon, the tech has been proven. They just don't see any such
potential.

NASA has been an R&D organization since their origins as the NACA. It's
a valuable function and should continue. It's the "tail wagging the
dog" aspect that needs to end. Back in the 60's, NASA had a clear goal
and a time limit. They had to use proven technology wherever possible
in order accomplish the mission on time. They succeeded brilliantly.
Since then, the technology development folks have been in the drivers
seat, and it simply has not worked.

Where you are going wrong, IMHO, is in assuming that it will require
technology breakthroughs to develop a reliable, fully-reusable launch
vehicle. You seem to think that the Shuttle has done the best that can
possibly be done with existing technology, which is an incorrect
assumption. The politicians and bureaucrats FUBAR'd the Shuttle design
right from the start and it never had any chance of reducing costs. You
appear to lack the engineering experience to understand how much better
we could have done even at the state of the art in 1970. A 2-stage,
VTOL RLV has been within the state-of-the-art for 30 years, but NASA is
uninterested in such an unglamorous approach. Instead, we got stuck
with a complex, partly-expendable design like the Shuttle, and to
replace it NASA chose aerodynamically complex horizontal landing SSTO
designs, which are beyond the state-of-the-art even now.

I'm not basing anything on the shuttle, really. I'm basing my point
on the zero-profit-potential of the Moon or anything in LEO beyond
comsats. What would we be going up and down to do? How would private
industry make a buck at it? I'm insisting that the price has to come
down by huge orders of magnitude that require a massive breakthrough
because the profit potential is so low.

I'd say we need an order-of-magnitude vs. the Shuttle for starters.
Another order-of-magnitude is possible as the traffic builds up.

The bottom line is that we don't have low cost space transportation now
because most of the politicians and bureaucrats have never been able to
find their a******* with both hands in order pull their heads out of
same. God only knows when this situation will change substantially for
the better, so, in the meantime, I would recommend you put your money
into cheese futures.

I think the area we differ on is how low the "low cost" has to be.
I'd say that for regular access to space, the cost would have to come
down to the cost of owning and operating a mid-sized private yacht,
and for that, you would need a tech breakthrough.

If you mean that a ticket to space needs to be about the same as the
cost of a mid-sized yacht, then I would not argue. I personally would
pay $50,000 tommorrow if someone were selling tickets. I would pay more
if it got down to a "now or never" situation. The part about needing a
technology breakthrough, however, is an opinion, not a fact, and I still
don't have a clear picture of what you're basing it on. You say it
isn't the Shuttle, but I don't know what else it could be.

On Thu, 3 Jul 2003 22:10:31 GMT, in a place far, far away, Dick Morris
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

The part about needing a
technology breakthrough, however, is an opinion, not a fact, and I still
don't have a clear picture of what you're basing it on. You say it
isn't the Shuttle, but I don't know what else it could be.

Let me guess, based on his many other similar posts--it's based on
rank ignorance.

--
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:

"John Ordover" wrote in message
om...
(Alan Anderson) wrote in message
...
(John Ordover) wrote:

...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.

Do you know what Clementine did?

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.

Here are two I can think of without even trying:

Whole-hemisphere views of Earth with the unaided eye.

Which will grow dull, like everything else, in a day or so. How long
can you stare at the Grand Canyon?

I've spent 9 days of my life in the Grand Canyon proper, another 15 in
Havasu and have barely touched it.

I could spend twice that and still go away unsatifisied.

In any case, I'll add another. What does the Moon offer, why the Moon
itself.

Your question is like asking "what does the Grand Canyon offer?" Yet a
number of companies seem to make a profit off of it, despite it being an
incredibly hostile place.




Low gravity (bringing with it the possibility of Daedelus-style flight,
among other things).

You can do that now, here on Earth, in a hang glider or ultralight
aircraft, unless you think that flapping your arms is somehow a draw.

I do.

I'm amazed at how willing you are to speak for others.

On Fri, 04 Jul 2003 02:37:48 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Greg D.
Moore \(Strider\)" made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Low gravity (bringing with it the possibility of Daedelus-style flight,
among other things).

You can do that now, here on Earth, in a hang glider or ultralight
aircraft, unless you think that flapping your arms is somehow a draw.

I do.

I'm amazed at how willing you are to speak for others.

Didn't you know? Mr. Ordover is omniscient. No one understands
markets better than him. Who are you to question 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:

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 04 Jul 2003 02:37:48 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Greg D.
Moore \(Strider\)" made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Low gravity (bringing with it the possibility of Daedelus-style
flight,
among other things).

You can do that now, here on Earth, in a hang glider or ultralight
aircraft, unless you think that flapping your arms is somehow a draw.

I do.

I'm amazed at how willing you are to speak for others.

Didn't you know? Mr. Ordover is omniscient. No one understands
markets better than him. Who are you to question him?

Oh I know. I'm still just amazed.



--
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:

(G EddieA95) wrote in message ...
I also think (I am prepared to be corrected) that a modern car is
actually more complex than a modern rocket,

AIUI, a rocket is more like a jumbo jet than a car, in the sense of the sheer
*amount* of work that must be done to build it, and the number of systems
required. Both rockets and jets require years of lead time to build.
Automobiles come off the line one per day.

You mean planes come off one per day.

If we could do that with expendables, that should put an upper bound
of $20 million on an expendable rocket, for say 20000kg.

I would guess (where's Henry Spencer when you need him) that a rocket
is a simpler proposition than a passenger jet.

You can also increase the volumes by making a rocket out of multiple,
identical (or similar) stages, leading to a (perhaps) seven fold
increase in volumes.

(G EddieA95) wrote in message ...
figure out when what
could have been built, if we'd known how. For example, a simple
glider could probably have been built with neolithic technology,

I doubt that very much. What evidence is there of wood-fabrication and textile
technology to do such at that ti

Are you confusing paleolithic and neolithic? The Native Americans
were at neolithic levels of tech when the Europeans arrived, and they
had textiles and were excellent woodworkers.


But the absence of the required knowledge is *precisely* where "pixie dust"
comes in. Is there a ny doubt that for anyone of us to go to Alpha Centauri
would require pixie dust? But in the late 2100s, when our descendants go
there, their ship will be lagrely fabricated using 21st-century methods.
Fabrication is not the barrier; lack of knowledge is.

What is pixie dust is assuming that in the 2100s our children's
children's children, etc. will see any point in going to AC.

(Allen Thomson) wrote in message . com...
(John Ordover) wrote

I'd say that for regular access to space, the cost would
have to come down to the cost of owning and operating a mid-
sized private yacht,

What is that? A few million up front and a few hundred kilobucks a year (guessing)?

That's about right. It varies, of course, just like the price of a
luxury car can vary.