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#341
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Fri, 26 Oct 2007 01:18:14 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote: This brings up the interesting question of currency; if you're not going back to Earth, what's the point of having money accumulating in a bank account their? ....Kids, kids, kids, the answer's pretty ****ing simple. Give them lots of money, but jack up the hell out of the cable TV bills so they'll actually have something to spend all that cash on! "I'm a space welder. I make $4500.00 USD an hour." "Wow! That's cool! You must be rich!" "Nope. My cable bill is $1M USD a month. Which means I have to work 60 hour weeks just to make sure I can watch all the games on Sunday when they're beamed up to the habitat." "****. That sucks dawg dicks, man." "Yeah, but at least the beer, pretzels and popcorn are covered in the basic rations package..." OM -- ]=====================================[ ] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [ ] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [ ] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [ ]=====================================[ |
#342
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
"Mike Combs" wrote:
The points you make might well be valid for the present era, where space is mostly about scientific exploration, with commerce consisting of little beyond communications and earth-resources satellites. Perhaps I should have more cautiously said that when space commerce becomes less about beaming data down to Earth, and more about hauling loads around, energy will become the dominant consideration in space. And I think even with the space transportation improvements we're anticipating to make all this happen, that will continue to be the case for quite some while. The central chicken-and-egg dilemma is embedded in that paragraph. You could equally well say that for 40+ years "space commerce" (i.e. space activity pursued because it pays) has been limited to "beaming data down to earth" ( a catch-all for commsats, remote sensing, GPS etc)... ....precisely *because* the very first step in "hauling loads around" is so expensive in energy. When such a tiny fraction of what you put on the pad gets to orbit, the first ledge in the wall of our gravity well, you face a very high price either to go further... *or* to bring back a reusable (with its TPS, heavier airframe, and landing equipment, all of which subtract yet more from payload). (And please, please, please: all of you who are about to condescendingly inform me that "propellant is cheap" and "the energy cost of a pound in LEO is comparable to flying it to Australia" ... don't bother. All of the other contributions to high costs -- the conflicting demands of performance and robustness, the amortization of expensive R&D over a small number of units manufactured and small number of launches, the infrequently used infrastructure and standing army -- are ultimately traceable back to the energetics of that 10-minute dance with the rocket equation. If you disagree, feel free to stand your Australia-bound airliner on its tail and throttle up.) So ideas about "the space transportation improvements we're anticipating" tend to fall into three categories: (1) do a lot more of what we're doing, reusably or otherwise, to spread the fixed costs over more flights and achieve economies of scale (2) apply the energy in non-rocket mode (catapult/gun launch, laser launch, space elevator, etc) (3) use cheaper-per-pound energy (nuclear-thermal, GA Orion, assorted magic breakthrough tech to be announced) None of them are cheap up front; all require a faith that they will open up commercial possibilities faster than those paying the bills (whether investors or taxpayers) run out of patience. |
#343
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
John Schilling wrote:
For any place we're going any time soon, you only see delta-V budgets of several times exhaust velocity during the initial launch from Earth. And that affects any destination equally; the first step's a doozy. Or "a bitch," as I wrote in Ad Astra online. The flip side of the optimism people usually find in the Heinlein/Stine "once you're in orbit you're halfway to anywhere" is that it can also be stated as: "Getting out of the gravity well eats half your delta-V budget by the time you catch your breath just 200 miles up"... so you're paying through the nose for everything beyond. http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra...t1_050818.html http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra...t2_050824.html http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra...t3_050829.html http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra...t4_050901.html |
#344
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
Hop David wrote:
The futility of dicking around in LEO has nothing to do with the potential of the moon and other space resources. This "futility of dicking around in LEO" meme is getting old. The Freedom Alpha ISS experience does *not* prove there's nothing worthwhile to do in LEO; it proves that if you plan your space station on the premise that you have a robust, frequently-flying, cost-effective space truck (the one you wanted in 1972) instead of the finicky, infrequently-flying, expensive STS you actually got, it will turn out to be 1) way over budget and way behind schedule 2) under-staffed and under-equipped to do most of what you had intended to do, and incapable of significant free-fall R&D because equipment/personnel manifests are so inflexible 3) running out of service life by the time it's [whatever you end up defining as] complete When people talk about "dicking around in LEO," the implication is "...instead of doing all those exciting and profitable things beyond that we coulda been doing instead." Like it or not, Hop, until we can get to LEO a lot more cheaply, none of those other "resources" in which you see so much potential can be more than a stunt or a proof of principle. And when we *can* get to LEO a lot more cheaply, a lot more things *will* be worth doing there. |
#345
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Oct 26, 8:22 pm, Monte Davis wrote:
When people talk about "dicking around in LEO," the implication is "...instead of doing all those exciting and profitable things beyond that we coulda been doing instead." Like it or not, Hop, until we can get to LEO a lot more cheaply, none of those other "resources" in which you see so much potential can be more than a stunt or a proof of principle. And when we *can* get to LEO a lot more cheaply, a lot more things *will* be worth doing there. Not the least among my objections to people grumbling about this "dicking around in LEO" is that I can no longer remember all the names of people who have paid about $20M a piece to "dick around in LEO". None have returned complaining that the experience didn't live up to their expectations (nor have I heard that from any astronaut.) LEO contains "nothing" in the sense that it's just about as jam-packed with vacuum as most other parts of space, but it's also got less cosmic ray load, a nice view of Earth, and microgravity to play around in. As Rutan was recently lamenting, a lack of payloads is holding back launch innovation, but "tourism" may well supply a lot of payloads for the next few decades. -michael turner |
#346
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Fri, 26 Oct 2007 01:18:14 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote: Jim Davis wrote: This is where you *completely* lose touch with reality. Spend your money *where*? Your scenario requires that a space worker *permanently* physically isolate himself from the vast bulk of humanity. The potential for possible monetary transactions (to say nothing of *social* transactions) are comparably circumscribed. This brings up the interesting question of currency; if you're not going back to Earth, what's the point of having money accumulating in a bank account there? Well, they could use it to pay people on Earth to send up rockets full of goodies for them. Or to pay people on Earth to perform services on Earth that are nontheless of value to people in space, like maintaining the Earthside end of an interplanetary broadband internet feed. And that's assuming *everyone* who goes out into space, goes out there to stay, even unto the death. Realistically, even in the end state, you're almost certainly going to have a mix of people who go to space to work for a couple years and then move back to Earth somewhat richer for the experience, people who go to space to live and work for a couple decades and then go back to Earth to retire in luxury, and people who go out into space to live and die. The former two groups have obvious use for Earthly currencies and bank accounts, so even the latter will be able to use their dollars or euros or whatever to buy goods and services locally. I think this is pretty much a non-issue, akin to claiming that Hawaii needs a seperate currency and isolated banking system on account of Mainland dollars and bank accounts being of no use to Hawaiians. -- *John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, * *Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" * *Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition * *White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute * * for success" * *661-718-0955 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition * |
#347
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
"John Schilling" wrote in message ... I think this is pretty much a non-issue, akin to claiming that Hawaii needs a seperate currency and isolated banking system on account of Mainland dollars and bank accounts being of no use to Hawaiians. I think this one pretty much nails it. The space economy will just become an extension of the terrestrial economy. That is, until you start sending colony ships on one way trips to other stars. ;-) Jeff -- "When transportation is cheap, frequent, reliable, and flexible, everything else becomes easier." - Jon Goff |
#348
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
"Jim Davis" wrote in message
. 96.26... But there's an equally big difference between working in space (or an oil rig) and living there *permanently*. Certainly. My argument is that the consortium doing the space construction work may come to have a preference for employees willing to live in space versus ones who only commute there to work. You'd have to come back to Earth to start spending your money on a nice car, fine restaraunts, or European vacations. You make that sound so...unpleasant. Not unpleasant for the worker. Inconvenient (and perhaps expensive) for the consortium doing the space construction. This is where you *completely* lose touch with reality. Spend your money *where*? Your scenario requires that a space worker *permanently* physically isolate himself from the vast bulk of humanity. The potential for possible monetary transactions (to say nothing of *social* transactions) are comparably circumscribed. Settlers in the new world chose to significantly isolate themselves from all of Europe. They did so willingly. Of course there was the potential for family life in the new world. The potential for local monetary transactions was there. I'm willing to allow that people won't start to settle space until there's a compelling economic opportunity, and the potential for family life. Mike, you really don't get it. Workers in oil-rig-type space habitats have the same potential for family life as workers in...well, oil rigs. You don't seem to grasp that *many* people are very attracted to careers where the 2000 odd working hours per year are heavily concentrated. Many people will cheerfully work 80 hour weeks for six months away from home if the other six months are free. What I can't seem to get across to you is that people won't be popping back and forth between Earth and HEO the way off-shore oil-rig workers can pop back and forth between there and the shore. I think tours of duty in HEO are a lot more likely to be 2 years than 6 months. It is madness to suggest that someone who lives on earth will have less potential for a family life than someone who lives in a Stanford Torus or Bernal Sphere. I'm making no such argument. I'm arguing that the analogy with off-shore oil rigs is not a perfect one, and certainly breaks down where the expected duration of tours of duty are concerned. A guy working a few tens of miles off the coast can have a family life on land much more easily than someone working half-way to the moon can have on Earth. And yet there are numerous terrestrial examples where that is precisely the case. But of course space will be different. We have yet to have an example on Earth where the costs of getting people back and forth are comparable. Yes, even with the 1/20 to 1/50 cost improvement we need to get started. -- Regards, Mike Combs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- By all that you hold dear on this good Earth I bid you stand, Men of the West! Aragorn |
#349
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Thu, 25 Oct 2007 03:56:55 -0700, Michael Turner wrote:
On Oct 25, 9:54 am, John Schilling wrote: Water, you can get, though only bound up in a mass of carbonaceous non-volatiles that bears a strong resemblence to coal. And you've got to be pretty desperate to try and squeeze water from a lump of coal. But it's at least within the bounds of reason and plausibilty. Actually, some people here on Earth are trying to squeeze water from coal; mainly to improve the coal's energy yield but also, in arid regions like Australia, to reuse the water. (I'd guess that the best use of water wrung/evaporated from coal is to recycle it into slurry pipelines, an application where you don't have to worry about detoxifying the water.) As for the idea that being 1 AU out from the Sun precludes embedded water ice, we shouldn't be so sure. The very notion of ablative reentry was substantially inspired by the discovery that meteorites landed with cold interiors. How cold can they get? According to rough calculations here http://www.meteorobs.org/maillist/msg20222.html perhaps as low as -25 C. OK, fine. Of course, a one-kilometer sphere of water ice, in vacuum and maintained at a temperature of -25C, will sublimate away entirely in about thirty days. So why were you considering that to be a "low" temperature again? Somewhat more important is any layer of dusty regolith overlaying the ice. However, even half a kilometer of regolith with 10% porosity and ten-micron pore size only gets you about 350,000 years lifetime, which doesn't add up to a hill of beans on an astronomical timescale. So you really are going to want to cool things down just a tad more, I think. Also, the ice we're mostly concerned with here is ammonia. -- *John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, * *Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" * *Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition * *White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute * * for success" * *661-718-0955 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition * |
#350
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
Mike Combs wrote:
Certainly. My argument is that the consortium doing the space construction work may come to have a preference for employees willing to live in space versus ones who only commute there to work. That makes no more more sense than to assert that oil companies may come to have a preference for employees willing to live at sea versus ones who only commute there to work. Indeed, I think the time lost to commuting would be *greater* for workers living permanently in space. Absenteeism would certainly be far greater. You'd have to come back to Earth to start spending your money on a nice car, fine restaraunts, or European vacations. You make that sound so...unpleasant. Not unpleasant for the worker. Inconvenient (and perhaps expensive) for the consortium doing the space construction. An inconvenience that is completely insignificant compared to the inconvenience of supporting the workers permanently in space at a standard of living approaching that of what they can enjoy on earth. Settlers in the new world chose to significantly isolate themselves from all of Europe. They did so willingly. Of course there was the potential for family life in the new world. The potential for local monetary transactions was there. I'm willing to allow that people won't start to settle space until there's a compelling economic opportunity, and the potential for family life. Sure. But the new world could be settled by preindustrial (and indeed precivilized and preintelligent) means. At insignificant cost compared to that of settling space. Which explains why they settled the new world and not that stretch between the new world and the old. Further, I don't think that promising workers a standard of living comparable to the first European settlers in America is quite the "can't miss" recruiting tactic that you seem to think it is. Standards have improved remarkably since those days. Trade unions and all that. What I can't seem to get across to you is that people won't be popping back and forth between Earth and HEO the way off-shore oil-rig workers can pop back and forth between there and the shore. Of course not. Who said otherwise? I think tours of duty in HEO are a lot more likely to be 2 years than 6 months. I think you have very naive ideas about the costs of of supporting the workers permanently in space at a standard of living approaching that of what they can enjoy on earth. I'm making no such argument. I'm arguing that the analogy with off-shore oil rigs is not a perfect one, What analogy is? But it's far, far better than your "new world" analogy. and certainly breaks down where the expected duration of tours of duty are concerned. Sure. Tours in space will be much longer than on oil rigs but nothing out of the terrestrial ordinary. And the expense of building SSPs will be much greater than that of building oil rigs which *is* out of the terrestrial ordinary. A guy working a few tens of miles off the coast can have a family life on land much more easily than someone working half-way to the moon can have on Earth. Why? Distance isn't the issue; time is. They both have the same amount of time to devote to their familial (and/or other) pursuits. In fact, a case could be made that a space based workforce would have *less* time with his family because of the necessity to work shifts to keep the SSP production facility operating 24/7. One could overcome this somewhat by having *three* Stanford toruses (tori?) or one divided into three separate communities to synch up a worker with his family but that adds to the inconvenience and costs. And yet there are numerous terrestrial examples where that is precisely the case. But of course space will be different. We have yet to have an example on Earth where the costs of getting people back and forth are comparable. Yes, even with the 1/20 to 1/50 cost improvement we need to get started. And we have yet to have an example on Earth where a place was permanently settled that required technology above a stone age level *regardless* of transportation costs. Draw your own conclusions. Jim Davis |
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