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Launch Limits Lifted
TOTKChief writes: "Apparently, Uncle Sam now doesn't want to keep an artificial advantage in commercial spaceflight launches. I personally think this is great -- allowing commercial booster companies unfettered access to space will allow for market action to take place, which should eventually drive down launch costs and allow for R&D efforts to further lower launch costs. " What's going on is that Russian rockets don't have sales caps here - or at least they're expiring, and aren't being renewed. This means more launches with Russian rockets, which means more stuff, hopefully, going into space.
- Desi
I disagree. I think space will be a great money maker purely for the advertising value, just imagine: The Pizza Hut Rocket has carried the first man to mars. The world watches breathlessly as the module lands down and the astronaut plants a "the Best Pizza's under 1 roof" flag on the dusty soil. Then a few shots of other astronauts eating pizza back on board should be enough to engrave whatever slogan they have into the minds of many whether they like it or not.
The slogans are endless: out of thid world, intergalactic, You don't have to travel to mars (shot of mars landing and pizza flag) to get a great pizza
This is why corporations are interested in the space program
Here's something I wrote over 10 years ago about this ridiculous situation:
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 89 10:46:54 PDTo m!jim@angband.s1.gov (Jim Bowery)
- -------------------------
From: mordor!lll-tis!oodis01!riacs!rutgers!pnet01.cts.c
To: ucsd!nosc!crash!space@angband.s1.gov
Subject: re: Private launch costs
John Roberts writes:
> Another problem: the USSR has just one "company" to supply all its launch
> needs. If the US has 10 private launch companies, will it have to have 10
> times the USSR's launch volume for all the companies to have good economy
> of scale?
The Soviet government's effectiveness in space activities can, in general,
be attributed to the fact that while our private sector is more effective
than the Soviet public sector, our public sector is LESS effective than
the Soviet public sector. Why this is so becomes obvious when you
consider that the Soviet public sector has no private sector to tax --
any costs are born by itself, directly, whereas in the US (and other
relatively free market economies) the governments have the luxury of
becoming fat and lazy at the expense of the private sector.
It is a simple matter of accountability, the US private sector is
most accountable for its costs, the Soviet system is next most
accountable for its costs and the US government is least accountable
for its costs.
-------------------------------------------------
Jim Bowery Phone: 619/295-8868
PO Box 1981 Join the Mark Hopkins Society!
La Jolla, CA 92038 (A member of the Mark Hopkins family of organizations.)
UUCP: {cbosgd, hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, nosc}!crash!pnet01!jim
ARPA: crash!pnet01!jim@nosc.mil
INET: jim@pnet01.cts.com
Seastead this.
Agreed! The Russians were doing it the American way long before the Americans were....
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
There is more to it than "protecting an American monopoly". The production of launch vehicles is a strategic industry. For national security, the USA must have a viable, domestic launch capability. Some payloads are too sensitive to be launched on foreign launch vehicles. The Russians and French may not always be willing to launch American satellites. It is in the USA's interest to keep both the Russian and American industries healthy.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Aside: I'm soooo sick of these politically "aware" types who confuse their hatred of the US and Micro$oft with objectivity. No, it's not a troll, the guy really thinks this way...
Every superpower does, has done, and will do the same kinds of things as the US. The European empires did, so did the USSR, and so will the EU and China when they get their acts together. Nobody complains about globalization when European companies spread, do they? Hyprocrites, all.
I think that given the economic, military, and intellectual power that America (yes, the US of A, not fscking Guatamala or Canada) wields, we've been very responsible. The USA may dominate the world, but as an open democracy (albeit with flaws) it provides an excellent role model.
In the case of rockets, why shouldn't the US dominate? A large chunk of my tax $$$ has been spent developing them; it'd be nice to see some return on the investment, and if that means not giving the technology away to Bezerkistan, then so be it.
As for Panama, Teddy Roosevelt broke off a bit of an extremely corrupt Columbia to make something that has benefited the entire world. If you'd actually read the history, you'd know that buying Panama from Columbia was not an option.
And bananas! You're bananas to think that the US is wrong to accuse Europe of unfair trade practices. The WTO can back me up on this...
sig semper tyrannis!
I mean, commercial jets are bad enough. Maybe we need to put the restriction back as an environmental law. Maybe we need to make strict emission quota laws for the booster rockets and suchlike that will be used.
Maybe through competition and public outrage combined, the private companies will develop not-as-bad methods of propulsion (slingshots!).
Probably not.
*sn
U is a Burmese apellation equivalent to Mister.
Nix is latin for snow.
UNIX means Mister Snow.
This won't markedly increase the "stuff going into space" anytime soon. For that you need a market, and right now, that market is pretty stable. From 1990 to present, there have been around 150 satellites a year launched on an average of about 70 rockets. Even the big build-up of satellite constellations in the late 90s (along with the entry of new spacefaring nations like Brazil and India) didn't change this much, although for a time, it resulted in much rocketry investment and several startups in the cheap-access-to-space field.
But make no mistake: with Iridium failing to sell at a penny on the dollar (that's right, 1% of the investment so far, and the buyer walked away), its strongest competitor Globalstar perilously close to bankruptcy, ICO just emerging from Chapter 11, Orbcomm losing money despite orders, and so on, the LEO constellation market is pretty much over and done with.
[See Lloyd's Satellite Constellations for more info.]
With the end of speculation in the LEO constellation business [as well as a tanking tech stock sector], Rotary Rocket failed to get further investment despite an operational vehicle. This pretty much put the kibosh on anyone like Kistler or Beal or energizing the Cheap Access to Space market by dramatically reducing launch costs, at least anytime soon.
It may seem counterintuitive, but there actually are only a limited number of things you can do in space. Communications satellites in GEO are one; scientific satellites in LEO are another. And there are already plenty of commercial devices selling the data they collect.
What the launch limitations did was two things. First, they were political cover for an administration burned by Loral malfeasance in assisting China with a launch. Second, they were a simple protectionist measure aimed at giving homegrown companies (Rotary, Beal, Kistler) a window in which to develop vehicles and compete for business against the established American leaders, Boeing and Lockmart.
The irony is that most post-Soviet space vendors (Khrunichev, Energiya, Ukraine's Sea Launch) have partnered with one or more of the leading American vendors, who are now able to steer customers to a "preferred" international partner, in effect recapturing lost business. There has been no new American vendor to reach maturity. Whether these quasi-monopolies constitute improved American competition for the global satellite business, which pretty much remains a zero-sum game, is an exercise for the reader.
----
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
>Proton: $3,500 / kg * 2.2 =~ $7,700 / lb >Shuttle: $20,000 / kg * 2.2 =~ $44,000 / lb Try: $3,500 /kg / 2.2 = $1,590 /lb $20,000 /kg / 2.2. = $9,090 /lb There's 2.2 lbs to the kg not the other way around! You have a point with the orbit- PROTON can lift 20 tonnes to 200 km, but the ISS is at about 200 miles. That will increase the costs of course, and it is significant, but the reduction of costs with volume of launch is still much larger.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"I forgot, does More_Stuff_In_Space == GOOD?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Actually, what we truly need is finding better ways to get the space junks out of the sky.
Putting useful stuffs up there may be wonderful, but till now, no one, - not Uncle Sam, and not the Ruskies either, - has come up a economically viable way to get the junks - stuffs that are NO LONGER NEEDED - down from the sky.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
>Proton: $3,500 / kg * 2.2 =~ $7,700 / lb /kg / 2.2 = $1,590 /lb $20,000 /kg / 2.2. /lb There's 2.2 lbs to the kg not the
>Shuttle: $20,000 / kg * 2.2 =~ $44,000 / lb Try:
>$3,500
>= $9,090
>other way around!
Argh! Almost every day I encourage my co-workers to go home after 8 hours because a person is bound to make stupid errors when they're tired. So, what do I do? Make a simple (and incorrect) calculation in haste right before I go to bed and post it to a public forum. Yes, those cost / conversion figures are dross, but I'll stand by the others.
You're right when you say that costs should tend to go down as launch mass goes up, as would fit with other economies of scale. However, launchers to date have been the exception which breaks that rule. As an example, the Titan IV, which offers the largest payload to orbit of any active launcher (Energia or Saturn V would be more) costs more to construct and operate each and every time it's launched.
Unfortunately, the complexity of a launch vehicle increases with attempted reliability no matter what the scale. With a little luck, new realistic designs (like those offered by Kistler) will fix this problem and bring about the launch costs and realiability which we're all hoping for.
You seriously think that nasa just puts a shuttle up there and crosses their fingers?
They track everything. last I checked (a while ago I admit) they had radars (like millimeter band or something) dedicated to this task.
I agree with you that space junk is gonna be a problem, but we aren't just putting stuff up there and playing routlette.
dv
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
Well, did you ever stop to think that the "missile defense" system that is being tested in the open, is just a negotiating piece that was meant to fail? If you think about the habit of the US government to supress "compromising" information about national defense, it makes sense that the missile interceptor program is conceivably a cover for something much more effective and much more "black budget". It is well known that the best defense is one that takes the offense by surprise, so why would it benefit the DOD to advertise their failures? short answer, if it really was a failure, it wouldn't benefit them at all. Just something to consider, :) S.
"Laws are like sausages, it is best not to see them being made" Otto Von Bismarck
Titan IV is about the same size as a Proton- and at about 3 times the cost if the figures I've managed to dig up are at all accurate. I'm not sure that increased complexity reduces failure rate. Increased complexity usually reduces reliability as a cost of improving performance. The Kistler design certainly appears to be a pretty good one so far. I don't like the look of the reassembly; but other than that it seems spot-on. The Roton design seems to me to be much more elegant, although even there the payload size is a bit small for my liking. Alas, if I only had $151 million... (One million to live off and 150 to give to Rotary Rocket!)
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"The concept of limiting US access to Russian space hardware really irks me. What the earlier restriction basically did was blackmail Russia into accepting the US terms. Russia needs Western capital to support their space program, and this law used that need to protect an American monopoly. This is no different from Microsoft tactics, using an organizations weight to manipulate the internal affairs of another country. Forcing Russian companies to make costs no more than 7.5% less than Western prices under the threat of losing that critical business seems, at least on the surface to be nuts. It hurts Russia, meaning we have to continue to pour money into their economy through non-job-creating means such as foreign aid and IMF loans, and it hurts American companies who need cheaper access to space.
Thank heavens that the Clinton administration... (wait, that's not right! The Senate has to legally ratify such treaties... that means that this was a bipartisan effort. Sorry, Bill, but you ain't gonna find a legacy here.) got something right. These restrictive and punitive protectionist measures only hurt our economy as well as foreign ones. This is certainly A Good Thing(tm) for both the US and Russia.
Depends whether you want a crack in the body or the heatshield...
Didn't we give the Panama Canal back? Maybe I should check again.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
While the US government is populated by idiots and shitheads, your position is weakened when you talk out your ass on well documented matters, such as the Panama Canal. You should read the treaty sometime, the original and ratified versions; our governments today could really learn from the cooperative spirit in which they were written. To break it down for you, Spain actually planned the Panama Canal in the first place, an international team was set up later to build it and that team obtained permission from the Columbian government to build the canal. The international group fell through, however, so a French company was formed to build it, headed by the dude who made the Suez Canal, who actually got some dirt turned, but ended up failing. The US then asked Panama if they could build a canal in their most excellent location to do so. Panama agreed, since it would bring a whole lot of business their way when they really had nothing else of value to the world at large to bring it in, they didn't have the resources to build one themselves and the US was going to pay them what was, at the time, shitloads of cash to operate it. Since the US was also considering building a canal in Central America and had negotiated a treaty to do so, and the French company was going into the shitter after spending around 20 years trying to get the project going themselves and failing miserably, the company decided to sell their land rights in the area and gear to the US for some huge amount of money at the time, about $40 million, IIRC. Work commenced, ground was dug, locks were built, people died and about 10 years later, there was a working canal. A commission would control operations of the canal, with a member of the USA as administrator and a Panamanian as deputy; in 1990, those roles switched as Panama prepared to take over the canal in full, as stipulated by the treaty. December 31, 1999, at noon, Panama took over the Panama Canal in full.
Take the time to educate the fool who blew that smoke up your ass concerning the history of the Panama Canal; while the US gummint is a collection of wasted sperm cells, it isn't an excuse to be ignorant of history. If you want reasons to hate the US, find the real reasons why we're pieces of shit, not the ignorant crap that your overly loud friend likes to toss around while trying to impress you with his versimilitude. Or better yet, stow your stereotypes, ditch the hate trip and try to enjoy life a little; although I may be a scumbag, many of my fellow US citizens aren't, so give 'em a chance.
Deo
I've heard the story, too bad it isn't true. Please stop spreading this myth.
Paul Fisher invested several million dollars of his own money to develop and patent the space pen. See this page.
By the way, pencils are a bad idea. They generate airborne graphite particles that contaminate the crew compartment.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Spider Robinson writes a column, Past Imperfect, Future Tense, for the Toronto Globe and Mail. A few months ago (last year?), his column was titled "Senator Socksdryer and the Two Million Dollar Boondoggle". In it, Spider relates a conversation he had with Buzz Aldrin at a science fiction convention where they were co-Guests Of Honour. Buzz Aldrin related a fairly hushed up incident in the Apollo 11 mission.
The lunar landing module was very tight for space. The story is that, at the end of the exploration phase of the mission, as our heroes get ready to return to Earth, they need to remove their backpacks (dead weight) and switch back to the LEM air supply. In removing his backpack in the tight constraints of the LEM, Neil Armstrong breaks the ignition switch for the ascent engine. They are stranded on the moon with no tools to fix the problem and a finite reserve of air.
As Spider puts it:
``It dawns on Armstrong and Aldrin that they are now dead men walking, a long way from home.
``And then, God be thanked, Armstrong remembers what Senator Jocksfire called the Two Million Dollar Boondoggle. That egregious taxpayer-ripoff frippery: his zero-gravity pen. He retrieves it, roots around in the ruins of the switch...and becomes the first man ever to hot-wire a vehicle on another planet."
In the rest of his article, Spider uses the space pen, and other by-products of space-race research, to justify the support of basic research by government in the face of opposition from pork-barrelling politicians like Senator Socksdryer.
The space pen had a bigger side effect than having any notes written by American astronauts more easily preserved for posterity. The failure of Apollo 11 could have crippled the American space program and provided the Russians with breathing room for their moon landing efforts. Kennedy's goal, after all, was ``to land a man on the moon and return him safely"
Jerry Pournelle argues the point that the fall of the Soviet Union is in large part due to the fact that the Russians bankrupted themselves trying to match the American SDI ("Star Wars") effort. Their belief that the Americans might succeed at Star Wars was, Pournelle believes, founded in the USA's success on seemingly impossible projects like Apollo. Would we still be living with the Cold War had we not had the space pen?
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
No i don't hate the US (actually i love the place and the people, i just can't stand the government, specially when in control by the republicans) and yes I have read the buneau-varilla treaty, the herran-hay treaty and the torrijos-carter treaty, i just happen to be a history buff regarding anything from simon bolivar to noriega (that bastard). of course you would know the history as it is probably told in the US on the discovery channel, but you would have to have lived here, on the other side of the fence (the Panama Canal comission fence) and have read the letters (like the ones that lead to the herran-hay treaty) and seen the treaty version signed by panama and the one approved by congress and so on. several of your statements are flawed or misleading (i.e. panamanians were assigned as deputies AFTER the torrijos-carter treaty; we never agreed to have the canal built, we just didn't have a saying there). this is not the time nor the place to discuss US-Panama relationships (of which i have a collage minor based on US and Panamanian books) so i'll just stop.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
Hmmm. I wonder . . . could Microsoft avoid the DOJ verdict by moving into space and proclaiming themselves an independent entity?
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
which company is going to put a stupid giant orbiting billboard in space first. Hmm maybe the cigarrete comapanies since they could make all the cartoon smokers they wanted. Maybe Microsoft's [sic] "grassroots" campaign, cause its about as stupid as giant orbiting billboards.
:) and maybe (you can bitch about how sound can't travel in space if you like) a giant speaker where we can all share Metallica's mp3s without paying for them. well, if Metallica didn't suck.
But in my opinion, if its gotta be done, might as well post the DeCSS source in orbit
But in reality...20 bucks says its porn. cause that would be fawking funny.
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
Karma points are like girlfriends. They don't really matter, cause you might lose a few trying to be intelligent and thoughtful, but when it comes down to it...just ignore them and make a few stupid jokes and you're back in the game.
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
I'll keep watching my backyard for debris.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
----
Trying is the first step toward failure. - Homer Simpson
I'd rather see an advancement in technology so that fewer satellites can do more, and life limits with controlled re-entry and burns.
Anyone know how much dead space junk is floating around up there? I saw a thing about how one collision could cause a chain reaction and cripple all the satellites. One collision causing hundreds of pieces of debris flying off and hitting other satellites.
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Stupid sexy Flanders.
Have you ever wondered why the Space Shuttle flies the way it does in orbit. That upside-down, doors half open position. It's so astronauts don't get torn to shreds by a high-velocity paint-chip while floating around out there.
More trash is currently being tracked than functioning craft (both can be considered satelites). We are creating another modern monument that will last eons, a ring around our planet. But ours will be trash!
We should be putting things in space. We should explore and use communications via satelites, but NO thought is going into what happens to all that stuff we leave behind!
This will continue to be our attitude until a shuttle is torn apart by somthing large enough to do it! Say, a one inch bolt that floated away from an old Apollo mission.
Oh well.
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
While this will be good for the satellite business, I don't think it will help drive down costs that much, beyond satellite technology. Beyond that you basically move up to space stations or planetary exploration.
Neither of these are particularly profitable, and even if they were, the investment needed would be far too high to outweigh the risk. I'm not sure what money could be made off a space station. Tourism is a possibility, but the market for it is too small, even if you could make a lot of money per person. Medical research is a possibility, but again I don't think there is much of a safe investment there either.
Planetary exploration stands to make no profit, until you have ships big and fast enough that could fly out and start mining the asteroid belt. Current technology levels for exploring mars or other planets is far better suited for scientific discovery than for a corporations bottom line.
So the conclusion is this: while privitization is sometimes good, it's not a blanket solution. The government still needs to pump money into it's own programs (space station, mars programs) until there is enough technology that can be transfered to private corporations that will allow for profitability. Most emerging markets followed a similar path, with most of the modern tech industry being a good example, after military technology was transfered to private corporations.
Actually hydrazine is usually not used as launch fuel, but as fuel for change of orbits and in general as attitude control fuel. For launches kerosene-oxygen is common (apart from hydrigen-oxygen) which produces carbon dioxide and water. Solid fuel boosters are the dirty ones, but for LEO satellites they are usually not necessary.
... with the US aerospace and launch industry, let me just say that you're fooling yourself if this is going to in anyway increase competition and/or inspire Darwinism. The American aerospace industry (at least on the top level) is a far cry from anything remotely resembling that. This move will do nothing to assist the aerospace industry at the level where true competition exists at. Of course, I also believe that it would do the aerospace industry a great boon if we took to heart Russian pragmaticism. The Russians don't have the greatest safety record, but their frontiersman attitude of improvising and practicality is something NASA, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, JPL, etc. should take note of. To give an example, the US spent on upwards of a million dollars researching, designing, and then fabricating a writing tool that could write in space, upside down, under water, etc. Know how much the Russians spent? $0.99 They used pencils.
For those who want to look up the original article, I don't have a date on my newspaper clipping. However, upon re-reading, the column indicates it was written within 3 weeks of the 30th anniversary of Apollo 11, so the column's publication date is presumably in early to mid- July of 1999.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
he may or may not have been involved, but I WAS NOT the 2nd gunner on the grassy knoll. but seriously, this shit is starting to bug me. I used to fuck with my friends by knocking them off irc with a few cable boxes i have around town. my "ping -f host"'s are now a DDoS. Its like everyone gets a little orgasim when they make the (optional big D), big D, the little o and the big S. I wanna make sometype of virus, network attack, or exploit just so i can give it a name that makes the acronym -IMFUCKINGDUMB- or -STUPIDME- then i can watch as my new buzz word spreads like wildfire! :)
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
Folks, I want to see cheap access to space as much as the next guy, but those limits placed on the Russian boosters were justified.
During the "bad old days" of communism, constructed items did not have a cost as western markets understand it -- they were constructed with parts and labour lovingly grafted from the collective (i.e. They were FREE). So, when the iron curtain fell and everything went up for sale, the prices the Russians put on their boosters were arbitrary. They did not reflect market reality and would heavily distort the launch market (which, at the time the limits were implemented, was dominated by _European_ boosters, not the Big Bad 'ol United States) and damage the global industry if they were to be sold at the quantities and prices desired at the time.
Today, Russia still has the same old boosters with the same old infrastructure but now they're charging western rates for the goods. Sure, they could go back to the $10 million per launch cost they claimed to be able to do before, but now, since they actually PAY their people in money, it wouldn't be a viable business and would collapse if they charged that rate.
This price equilization would have occurred sooner or later without the imposition of limits. However, limits minimized the damage to the rest of the world's space sector while giving Russia time to get their act together.
If Russia wants, they can still charge bargain prices for their "superior" launch technology. Nothing is stopping them from running themselves out of business if they want to.
>Anyway think about this. The Russian proton
>launcher if it was man rated (it isn't); it could
>launch people for around $350,000 per person. If
>there is competition in this market; this price
>can fall by 4 or more, easily. 10x is harder. But
>there are credible designs that reduce it by a
>100x.
...and operate at a slightly reduced margin of risk? Is one spacecraft lost in 100 a good margin for you? Would you take that kind of risk at an airport?
So, it costs $350,000 to launch a person to orbit on your dream ship...
Plan on bringing any food? Clothing? Air? A habitat? I'll bet you could find a Western launcher able to hoist your naked body aloft for $350,000, too.
Looks like you're spending too much time waving your arms (wishing Reeeeeeeeeeeeally hard) and not enough time being an engineer.
I share your concern with space junk, but measures have and continue to be taken today to reduce the quantity of debris in orbit.
Some things to keep in mind:
Expended boosters are de-orbited, along with expired satellites, once their mission has been completed.
Companies which violate this policy (by screwing up and creating debris) face heavy financial penalties. It's not worth a company's while to keep junk in orbit.
Lens caps, protective covers, etc. remain attached to spacecraft these days. They do not fly off into the ether when finished with, as they once did.
Orbits decay. Once you put something about the Earth, the (very thin) atmosphere creates drag which slows the item and draws it back into the atmosphere to be burned up. I doubt you'll find a one-inch bolt which floated away from an old Apollo mission.
As romantic as your imagery is, we are not creating "another modern monument that will last eons". Thought _is_ being given to "all that stuff we leave behind".
There is already a scary glut of launch vehicles today. The manufacturers had been forcasting a lot of demand, based on the expected success of Iridium. Iridium is a constellation system, which requires lots and lots of launches, as compared with single-launch satellites like the ones the Sea Launch puts up.
So... When Iridium went bankrupt, we saw an immediate evaporation of interest in constellation systems. Very simply, investors don't want to take the risk. Sometimes the systems have been reformed as non-constellation systems, or lumped onto other satellites, and other times they're simply cancelled. In any case, the net result is the same: The projected large market for launches is vanishing rapidly.
I think all of us know that the way to get low per-widget costs is to make a lot of them. Henry Ford proved this out with his affordable mass produced cars. And we all know that when you write a piece of software, the more customers you can sell to, the wider you can spread your development costs, and the lower a price you can charge and still make profit. Competition is a great way to drive costs down, but doing it in volume is an even better way.
So I don't know, maybe there will be a "clearance sale" or some such, but I *think* the result ain't going to be what we'd like. Having more launchers is fine, but what we *really* need are a lot more launches. Nothing else is really going to drive costs down to where we need them, IMHO.
I'm glad to see that we're both well educated on this issue and we just happen to either interpret information differently or simply have different views of the same events. This sort of diversity is very healthy and I now respect your possition on this subject since it's probably based either on fact or on a very thorough effort to get to it.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
>So, it costs $350,000 to launch a person to orbit ...
Very roughly, atleast this is the current freight cost. In theory (though probably not in practice), the only thing that needs lifting is an hour of air, and my naked body, and I don't suppose a swimming costume would break the budget ;-)
The rest can be up there already if need be, certainly air can be recycled. Food might be grown in space as well. The habitat is a fixed cost. Reducing launch costs also reduce the costs of mining the moon- low earth orbit is closer to the lunar surface than the earth. Once enough infrastructure is launched lunar materials are much cheaper for basic building materials.
Sure whatever happens its going to cost many billions; but there's plenty of projects of that size on the earth.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Personally, I think that there could be problems with loads of new stuff going into space. There's already a lot of satellites out there, but the worst part is all of the uncontrollable debris.
I think that NORAD or whatever tracks *thousands* of pieces which could cause damage. Every time one of those rockets deploys its payload you have a panel or a bolt go floating off, ready to punch a hole in something at 18,000 mph.
Just food for thought.
No comment at this time
Oh I'm so glad to hear this. As someone that has had to live with US imposed economic sanctions, biased treaties, self serving "bilateral" agreements, and in general the result of the huge leverage US negotiators ALWAYS count on, i'm pleased to see (and at the same time disgusted) that things don't always go the US way (of course after they've milked the damn suckers for years). So they're the world's only superpower, i know, let's bully everybody else so that we stay there! oh and BTW let's sue Bill Gates for doing the same!!! i say rot in hell to both uncle sam and BillG. i know i'll get flamed to ashes, but in your heart you know i'm right. Did any of you ever read a treaty on the Panama Canal? they basically read something like "we're god you know, so we'll build this godly thing called a canal, and we'll do it in your best piece of land, and we'll own it forever and profit from it forever, and your laws won't apply to the area we control and you'll never get it back and we won't pay you a dime, deal? of course the "panamanian negotiator" was actually a european guy payed by the US government to represent Panama without informing us!! well, stuff like this has happen to basically every country that has gotten into some kind of agreement with the US over anything, from rocket launches to importing bananas (and you don't want me to go there believe me...). and if you don't comply they'll basically either manipulate the IFI's and WMF into giving you lower investment ratings, add you to a black list in either money laundry, drug trafficing or anything else that will put economic preasure so that you eventually budge and accept their terms. god i can go on forever, but i already lost all my karma in offtopicness with this post. the stuff going on with the music industry and DeCSS is not domestic affairs, it's the way the US makes business internationally too. (or do you really believe that only powerful companies behave like that and not super powerful governments? who do you think thaguht who?)
ranting off.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
The good side to this is it makes the heavy lift rockets from Russia more available. Since some of these have a significantly higher capacity than those used by NASA, it opens some possibilities for larger satelites, ISS modules, Mars missions, etc.
The bad, however, is that this could significantly add to the amount of space junk already orbiting about earth. I hope that somewhere in this deal, someone is considering this.
** Sig-a-licious **
This means more launchs with Russian rockets, which means more stuff, hopefully, going into space.
More stuff? Shouldn't we at least get all the dead monkeys in metal spheres out of the way before everyone starts launching their sat's and orbiting q3 arena servers?
-----
Cethiesus
"Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."
Are rockets really what commercial space ventures should be using? Chemical rockets ,that is. They're big, heavy, expensive, and dirty (there's more to it than 2H2 + O2 => 2H20. Lots of hydrazine and who knows what else).
If chemical rockets were hard to come by, but there were still a big market for getting stuff up into space, wouldn't it just accelerate the development of more efficient launch systems? This will only provide less of an incentive to improve.
Due to the recent complete failure of our "nuke defense system" (aka Star WARS), one has to ponder that maybe the US is confident that if we aren't able to properly fly things into space to shoot things out of the atmosphere, then Russia won't be able to either. Call it an inferiority complex, but I think the US wanted to strut their stuff and failed miserably. Star WARS was a product of the seventies, and so was the cold war -- I thought our "global community" had moved past those days.
"I try to live a lifestyle that Chairman Mao would not find amusing. Have fun." -The Plaid Jedi
The deal was dodgy anyway. The size of the space market seems to be partly set by the price- the idea is that reducing the cost of a rocket would just reduce the profit in space. I don't completely understand that, but it makes a certain sense in the short term; if you assume the industries make a fixed percentage of the price, and if the amount launched doesn't depend on the price. Neither is true in detail, or probably general. Probably reducing the price will raise the total value of yearly launches, in the long run.
Anyway it looks like the cartel has broken up. Probably the Ruskies think that they have better rockets based on their long cost-sensitive development history (and they have a point). And they have cheap labour costs.
Maybe the Merkins think that they have more money and can come up with a better design themselves. Maybe, but the cost of rockets seems to increase with greater sophistication rather than decrease.
Personally I'd bet on the Ruskies, but the Merkins might win.
Basically every time the space shuttle launches for the same cost the Russians could have launched about 6 times. That's nutty but true.
Everyone's probably heard the story about the space pen- the Americans needed something that can write in zero-g. They spent a million dollars developing a pen that can write upside down, underwater and even in zero-g. The russians used pencils. That sums up the difference in principle between the two approaches.
Anyway think about this. The Russian proton launcher if it was man rated (it isn't); it could launch people for around $350,000 per person. If there is competition in this market; this price can fall by 4 or more, easily. 10x is harder. But there are credible designs that reduce it by a 100x.
Would you pay $3500 for a trip to space? I would...
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!">There's no inherent reason why rockets have a 1
;-)
...
>in 100 failure rate.
No, there is no _inherent_ reason. However, since a rocket is a big tube 'o propellant which pushes itself upwards through a controlled explosion, I'd say there's a very _good_ reason why rockets tend to have a 1 in 100 failure rate: They are very complicated things to manufacture, maintain and operate and cost a great deal in time, money and effort to do so reliably.
>In fact rockets are quite unreliable the first
>few launches and then improve quite considerably.
>The problem with launchers at the moment is they
>haven't launched enough times to get the bugs
>out.
Rockets are not necessarily unreliably the first few launches, nor do they fix themselves after being launched over 100 times.
Given that logic, I'm sure Windows will become the most reliably O/S on the market if it's launched enough times to get the bugs out, too!
>>So, it costs $350,000 to launch a person to
>>orbit
>Very roughly, atleast this is the current freight
>cost.
Do you have numbers to back that claim up?
>In theory (though probably not in
>practice), the only thing that needs lifting is
>an hour of air, and my naked body, and I don't
>suppose a swimming costume would break the budget
>;-)
>The rest can be up there already if need be.
I'd say the need for it being up there is pretty high, seeing as you intend to launch yourself naked through space, saving your swim suit.
>Sure whatever happens its going to cost many
>billions; but there's plenty of projects of that
>size on the earth.
...and they generate Billions in revenue or benefit, too! That's why they're pursued.
The cost of building that facility in itself will ruin your $350,000 dream flight. How do you intend to spread that multi-billion cost around? Presuming you could manage to launch and construct your space facility for $20 billion (a bargain price for a space habitat!), you'd need to find 20,000 customers willing to pay $1,000,000 for this thing to pay for its construction costs alone. Then there's on-going maintenance, replenishing fuel, oxygen and food (how much do you intend to eat while you're there?) which need to be launched for every visit. Or do you intend to construct a hydroponics facility, too? How much mass in food, clothing, life-support, etc. etc. etc.? More than one-person's body weight for each visiting person?
I'd like to believe you could go to space safely and visit for $350,000 (REALLY I do) but it's just not possible given forseeable technology.
You can believe what you want, but if you can't back it up with numbers, it's just wishful thinking and arm waving.
>>No, there is no _inherent_ reason. However, since
>>a rocket is a big tube 'o propellant which pushes
>>itself upwards through a controlled explosion
>No explosions are involved.
Err... Have you found a different means of Earth-to-Orbit propulsion aside from chemical combustion? I know a few engineering firms who would like to chat with you if you have...
>Anyway, most failures these days are stupid
>things like guidance system screwups- software
>bugs that sort of thing. The point is that all
>failures are removable with practice, process or
>redesign changes. There's nothing in the laws of
>physics that says that 2% of all rockets explode.
Nope, there's nothing at all that says 2% of rockets should explode. The problem is, 2% of rockets _do_ explode for the reasons you stated (faulty turbopumps, software, guidance systems, etc.). Do you intend to make 100 rockets into test articles (with zero payload and zero revenue for all flights) to try and work out the bugs?
>Oh sure. Proton has about the lowest cost at
>present $60-80 million for 21 tons. Let's take
>$70 mill. Lets assume an average weight,
>say 85 kgs and you end up with about 280 people
>per launch.
What?!?! Are you going to melt people into goo and pour them into the fairing? How do you intend to shove 280 people into a payload fairing the size of a school bus? Intend to add any seats, oxygen, radiation sheilding, etc. while you're at it?
How did you get that 21 ton figure for a Proton's payload capacity? My Aviation Week & Space Technology Sourcebook says that a single Proton-K launch can deliver 12,100 lbs into a 28.5 degree transfer orbit. Just a wee bit less than you're dreaming of.
And where did you get that cost figure!?!? Last I read, the __lowest__ commercial launch cost in the world (including the Proton or Long March) will give you $10,000 / lb to Low Earth Orbit, with a Proton launch costing significantly more than the $70 million you're claiming.
>Its definitely doable, but it's getting over the
>startup hump that's the problem- like most
>businesses.
Yes, it's definitely do-able -- the Space Station (if nothing else) is proving that. However, human spaceflight is _not_ commercially viable.
You seem to be as honestly keen about the space program (and humanity's future in space) as I am. The things you are discussing are possible but you're pulling numbers out of thin air and wishing for a reality that does not exist. You're not doing the space program or yourself any favours by turning physics into fiction.
I'd suggest you take a peek into some peer-reviewed publications such as Acta Astronautic, Advances in the Astronautical Sciences, The Journal of the British Interplanetary Society or periodicals such as Aviation Week and Space Technology to get an idea of what's possible today and what is likely to be possible tomorrow (without the advent of some miracle like anti-gravity). All of these publications can be found in an average-sized university library and can be perused for free.
While you're at it, why not take the time you spent on Slashdot today and write a letter to your MP / Congressman / Senator encouraging a stronger budget for your own nation's space program? I'm off to do that right now...