Re: Building Real Spaceships

On Feb 6, 4:28 pm, Gene Ward Smith <g...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Willie.Moo...@xxxxxxxxx wrote in news:42274ef1-c454-4f61-
84df-9e810d64b...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:



How are you going to plant a self-
sustaining colony of subsistence farmers on Ceres,

I never said anythinig about be self sustaining.  That's
what you
don't get.

In which case we cannot possibly afford to keep it going.

I note your total lack of numbers. So, this is another of your
gratuitous assertions.

Nevertheless, it comes close to a legitimate question, so I'll answer
the implied question.

A fully resuable ship of the type I've described is capable of a moon
flight for $100 million. It is cpable of carrying 1,000 tons of cargo
- this is a cost of $100,000 per ton. User fees, and commercial
charges of this subsidized payload would likely recover much of this -
60% to 70% -this would make the cost of living on the moon double the
cost of living in Hawaii. Since incomes would likely be 50% to 100%
higher - this is easily sustained. This reduces the cost of a ton to
the government to $40,000 to $50,000 per ton. This means that 120,000
people sustained by a fleet of 10 ships flying monthly to the moon,
would cost $4.8 billion to $6.0 billion per year - out of our $50
billion per year budget.

Once a source of water is found on the moon, the amount of resources
needed by each colonist will be reduced to 100 kg. The price paid for
this can easily exceed $100,000 per ton - and the way is open for
subsidies to end as commercial space operators supply materials for a
profit. At that point, populations can rise to any level sustained by
economic activity.

The incomes of 30% to 40% of the people will be subsidized as well -at
the 120,000 level. At $100,000 per year this means that 36,000 to
48,000 people would be paid $4.3 billion to $5.8 billion out of the
$50 billion a year budget.

Again, once water is found in recoverable quantities on the moon, the
economic picture changes, which drives the population to higher
levels, even while the core population of government workers, remains
constant.

And this is only one factor. Another factor is a falling cost of
transport over time - the result of fundamental propulsion research.
Another factor is the development of off world resources that earn
substantial profits when exported to Earth.

That's what you don't get. You consistently ignore economics,

No I don't.

starting by ignoring the question of what the return on this
vast investment is expected to be.

I am not ignoring that at all, because that wasn' t the subject of my
original post. The subject of my original post is that we have the
technical means and for the past 60 years have had the technical means
to settle the moon and mars, and have ignored doing so. You have said
I was full o f***. I am not. You have said we cannot do it. We
can. You have said it is too costly. It is not. You have said there
is no compelling reason for the US government to support sucha
massive effort. I say there is and the effort is less massive than
the ones we are pursuing for far more specious goals. NOW you are
saying I am ignoring expected returns. This tacitly admits you were
wrong on all your earlier objections because asking someone the
benefit of paying a certain price for a thing admits that the thing
exists and costs what I say it costs.

The benefits to the nation are geopolitical at first, but over time
will become very tangible and practical as off world resources are
developed.

Rockets impart momentum to things. As investments in rocket
technology are made, the amount of momentum imparted for a given cost
increases. This is the fundamental measaure of economic performance
of rockets. As the cost of momentum declines, the order of battle is
fixed by the velocity difference between Earth's surface and various
points in interplanetary space. As we can see, getting to orbit is
energy wise, half the way to getting anywhere. That's why it took
only a very few years from orbiting the first satellite to sending
probes to the inner planets to sending probes across the solar system
and into interstellar space.

As we develop resources and capacities off-world, the relation of
those resources and capacities to Earth-bound populations is fixed for
all people of Earth. So these capacities and resources are seen from
Earth as affecting everyone everywhere equally. These naturally lead
to universally accepted points of view and universal political
paradigms. Taking control of this process and directing it for the
benefit of the United States is the immediate benefit to the United
States going forward. In time as costs fall and capacities increase,
vast new resources of whole planets are developed that benefit
everyone on Earth - with the US leading the way and controlling
development. Failure of the United States to take this bold visionary
step into the future, cedes control to someone else, some other nation
who will reap the benefits.

WE have been standing idle for too long, The time is ripe to take the
lead, before this opportunity bypasses us forever.

Here is the order of development as systems fall in price;

1) small suborbital systems - 1947 - ICBMs
political cosequance - global thermonucleear war
world peace

2) orbital systems - 1957 - satellites
political consequence - internet
world business

3) large cislunar systems - 1967 - Apollo
political consequence - environmental movement
world cooperation

Here is where we stopped. The next step beyond that was

4) very large interplanetaery systems - 1977 -space settlements
politicla consequence - one world one future
world growth

Beyond politics there are real practical benefits. Communications
satellites, navigation satellites, weather satellites, recon
satellites - provide important and valuable services that are still
growing today. Communication satellites for example have grown from
one to one - where a signal was sent from a satellite uplink to a
satellite downlink. to one to many - where a signal was sent to a
satellite to many recievers simultaneously (DirecTV, Sirius, etc) -
the next step will be many to many (Teledesic) which will bring
global wireless broadband. Once this is avaiable market studies
indicate it will be worth $100 billion or more. This will continue to
grow with a wide range of services. Telepresence, telerobotics, for
example has been tried - a surgeon in Chicago carried out a surgery in
Columbus Ohio via high speed internet using these techniques in 1999 -
robots like Asimo will be driven by such an internet in the future -
and allow people to live anywhere and work anywhere else - this will
be a market that will be worth trillions and increase wealth by
several tens of trillions of dollars per year.

The image of Earth taken from the vicinity of the moon galvanized the
thinking of a generation and made the environmental movement
mainstream. The Earth alone an vulnerable in space with no borders -
released an idea to the world - of the Earth as a single place in the
cosmos. Meanwhile, satellite data regarding the Earth's environment
led directly to the Gaia hypothesis giving sound scientific basis to
environmental concerns world wide. Also, the emotional response of
hard boiled fighter jocks who flew to the moon, is an untold story
that will be revisted with greater force and greater benefit when
large populations of more impressionable people live and work on the
interplanetary frontier.

As early as 1968 the success of the Saturn V rocket led some engineers
to propose gathering sunlight in space and beaming it to receivers on
Earth. As the cost of momentum delivered by rockets fall, this idea
will one day be economically competitive with more traditional sources
of energy. At that point, the Earth will begin harvesting the first
off-world resource profitably in a big way. The Earth presently burns
28.3 billion barrels of oil per year, 5.5 billion tons of coal per
year, and 2.2 billion tons of natural gas per year. This could all be
replaced by 3.34 billion tons of hydrogen per year made from 30
billion tons of water made by generating 167 billion megawatt hours of
electricity from sunlight. To do that with terrestrial collectors
requires 98 trillion watts of panels covering over 550,000 sq km. To
generate this energy in space requires 19 trillion watts of panels in
space - covering 35,000 sq km of collectors on orbit beaming energy to
45,000 sq km of collectors on the ground The Earth at present spends
$4 trillion per year powering its industry and produces 40 billion
tons of carbon dioxide a year. Eliminating this source of pollution,
overcoming the limits to supply, and reducing overall costs of energy
- are the benefits a practical space system would provide.

Airless or nearly airless bodies can dispatch raw materials off their
surface using rail gun or magnetic launcher technology very large
buckets of material can be precisely tossed across the solar system
using these techniques at very low cost. Methods of catching a stream
of precisely aimed materials have been worked out. In this way
hydrogen rich compounds may be transported cheaply from Mars to the
Moon. Materials may be transported from Mars, Ceres or the Moon to
Earth.

The US State Department has a list of 16 strategically important
metrials that are important to the continuation of the United States
as a great industrial nation. Once our energy shortages are addressed
with space power, these materials wil increase in importance since
economic growth will put upward pressure on the prices of these
materials as the US has greater competition for these materials.
Strategic reserves of many of these materials have been established.
Many of these mateirals came from space in th efirst place. Finding
and developing caches of these materials off world, and developing
them to supply growing industry on Earth will do much to ease tension
in the future, and establish the US in a leading role in managing the
economic development of the world.

Returning materials to Earth orbit from Ceres, Mars and the Moon, and
establishing a solar powered industrial capacity on orbit can pay huge
dividends. Particularly if people can report to work
telerobotically. Materials can be reduced and processed on orbit
without polluting the Earth. Materials and finished goods can be
deorbited with the precision of a JDAM to consumers anywhere on
Earth. With adequate supplies, large pressure vessels can be
constructed on orbit and used to grow food, fiber and wood - and those
products can be delivered anywhere they're needed across the solar
system - using the same rail gun launcher technology that brough the
ores to Earth orbit to begin with. In the end, the bulk of human
economic and industrial activity will take place on orbit powered by
the sun. The bulk of the Earth will be returned to a vast nature
preserve, and residential park.

These are just the benefits we can see today using technology that is
well in hand today. Those who actually live and work in space, those
who actually build the hardware and operate it across the frontier,
will have better more profitable ideas. All I am saying is that we
owe it to ourselve to give them that chance. Failure to do so cedes
the leadership position to others, and seals our fate as a once great
nation.

.

Loading