Cheap access to space

What technology do we need to develop before week long trips to orbiting
hotels and lunar hotels are affordable by average middle class people?

Is this likely to happen in the next ten years? 20 years?


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Wow! Those grubs at the Golden Horseshoe Saloon are a good deal!

"Bootstrap Bill" wrote in message
news:joh9d.199919$MQ5.56227@attbi_s52...
What technology do we need to develop before week long trips to orbiting
hotels and lunar hotels are affordable by average middle class people?

It is a myth that we need to develop new technology to achieve this goal.
We have to develop new (very likely reusable) spacecraft in order to achieve
this goal, but both the US and Russia have had the technology to send people
to orbiting space stations since the early 70's.

Is this likely to happen in the next ten years? 20 years?

It all depends on how successful and profitable the suborbital tourism
market turns out to be. Ask again a year or two after Virgin starts flying
operational, suborbital tourism flights.

Jeff
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"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

"Bootstrap Bill" wrote in message
news:joh9d.199919$MQ5.56227@attbi_s52...
What technology do we need to develop before week long trips to orbiting
hotels and lunar hotels are affordable by average middle class people?

It is a myth that we need to develop new technology to achieve this goal.
We have to develop new (very likely reusable) spacecraft in order to
achieve
this goal, but both the US and Russia have had the technology to send
people
to orbiting space stations since the early 70's.

Is this likely to happen in the next ten years? 20 years?

It all depends on how successful and profitable the suborbital tourism
market turns out to be. Ask again a year or two after Virgin starts
flying
operational, suborbital tourism flights.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

It's been more than 40 years since the first orbital flight. Why does it
still cost more than $10k per pound to launch anything into orbit?

It's been more than 40 years since the first orbital flight. Why does it
still cost more than $10k per pound to launch anything into orbit?


at least for nasa costs have continued to climb. very sad.
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End the dangerous wasteful shuttle now before it kills any more astronauts....

"Bootstrap Bill" wrote in message
news:tjj9d.200501$MQ5.114883@attbi_s52...

It's been more than 40 years since the first orbital flight. Why does it
still cost more than $10k per pound to launch anything into orbit?

Because we haven't been doing the right things in those 40 years to lower
costs.

Jeff
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"Bootstrap Bill" wrote:
It's been more than 40 years since the first orbital flight. Why does it
still cost more than $10k per pound to launch anything into orbit?

Because the demand and competetion that would lead to such price
reductions has never emerged.

D.
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Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
"Bootstrap Bill" wrote:
It's been more than 40 years since the first orbital flight. Why does it
still cost more than $10k per pound to launch anything into orbit?

Because the demand and competetion that would lead to such price
reductions has never emerged.

It's a chicken and egg problem. One could also state that launch prices
have not dropped enough to stimulate the demand necessary to enable real
completion to emerge. In other words, the price to develop traditional
launch vehicles is so high that you can't make back your investment.

Jeff
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