From: vince@offshore.ai (Vincent Cate) Newsgroups: sci.space.policy Subject: Re: When will we be able to afford space settlement? References: <9186edb5.0404180452.1f5fca64@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.42.133.252 Message-ID: <9186edb5.0404190302.23cfb169@posting.google.com> Ordover@aol.com (John Ordover) wrote in message news:... > > With a space tether you can transfer the momentum from a tourist > > returning to earth to a tourist coming up into space. This makes > > it possible to have far cheaper flights, like $50,000 > > for a week in space. At this kind of price the market should > > be very large. For every 20,000 tickets sold at this price you > > gross another billion dollars. > > How many billions did it take to build the system in the first place? The initial investment should be less than 1 billion. This gets you a suborbital RLV and a tether with a 4,000 Kg capacity. With this you can start making money and building the hotel. As you get more rooms in the hotel people, you can let people stay in space longer. > For some reason, paying off the initial investment is always left out > of the ticket price when these calculations are made, as if the > infrastructure just appears for free. We have not done this. A tether can bootstrap really well. We expect 1 launch from a Falcon-V ($12 mil) for an initial small tether and then using our own RLV with the tether for everything else. As the tether gets bigger we can load up the RLV more. We also lift up larger tethers as needed. In our design it takes around 100 days to get to 4,000 Kg payload. The limiting factors are the current capacity of the tether (a function of both the tether strength and total ballast) and the amount of solar-power/thrusters to reboost the tether for all the one-way tether traffic. For more info see: http://spacetethers.com/cc1.bootstrapping.html We do assume a high flight rate, which is another common flaw made by space enthusiasts. The most famous case being the initial Space Shuttle claims. But since our rocket is only a suborbital and not orbital, making hardware to handle a high flight rate seems realistic. There really seems to be a large market at a $50,000 ticket price, so the demand could be real too. -- Vince ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Vincent Cate Space Tether Enthusiast vince@offshore.ai http://spacetethers.com/ Anguilla, East Caribbean http://offshore.ai/vince ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You have to take life as it happens, but you should try to make it happen the way you want to take it. - German Proverb