Making Space Affordable - The Next Human Era?

Hey there

I've been wondering when we will be able to go to space and live in space. So I was thinking.... right now, everything in space is controlled by governments. So privatizing would be the first step, and it is already being done when it comes to transportation. Still, we would probably need some kind of transport that could actually go up there, come back and would have to be able to do this several times. We still don't have that either.

So what? Is space completely uninteresting to most people? Wouldn't be a wise ideas to invest some money in it?

For those that are against, think about it. When the first cars were done, everyone thought that only the rich would be able to afford them. Cars used to cost something like a million bucks. Years later, mass production happened and today almost everyone has cars. The same with computers and interent. First, people would laught with the idea of PCs and internet for everyone. Today, I'm sure nobody laughts anymore...

And obviously, we would need lots of investiment in technology, so that we would be able to travel faster and more safely.

So, here is a summary of what we need to make space affordable, according to our past experiences:

1. privatization
2. mass production
3. investiment in technology
4. investiment in safety

Not sure if I got the order right, but whatever...


Now, if we consider the things we might need to produce. First, we would need transportation towards space, of course. Which kind of transportation? Mass transportation or individual one? I would say individual one. All that we would need would be, again, private companies, mass production and safety. In the beginning, the average person would obviously not be able to affor it. But how many people here, given affordable price and safety, would like to go up in the sky, see the planet and come back? I bet lots of people, right? So, should we mass produce small "flying cars"? Maybe. We certainly have the technology more and more avaiable to get to that point. Of course, transit safety would be an issue, but...

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Another thing would be housing. That would be a little bit tougher. We would definetely need to create an ambient that mimics the earth, or otherwise wait until our genetics adapt to the new environment. Things that we would need would be 9.8m/s² gravity, renewable oxygen, water, controlled sunlight and renewable food. Still, a whole thread could be opened just to discuss this, so I won't go into details. I might start one about it and link to here, as soon as I can. Besides all that, we would also need materials to build the "houses". They could come from various places such as rocks in planets, rocks in satellites and rocks in asteroids...

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1. Transportation
2. Housing
3. Shops

Now that we have our "plan" set up (any questions or suggestions before moving further?), we can analize the economic implications, calculate the money spent and the profit and see if we can make space affordable. Go ahead. I'm tired now and I don't have enough economic skills. Think about marginal cost and all the other kinds, the economic profits, and especially the opportunity cost and the economic growth.

If we can make space affordable, we would probably go beyond the era of information and go into an space era, right?

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I hope some people here are cool enough to try it out.

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• Space elevators
• Weird News of The Day
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I think it's more along the lines of "will I still be around to see the outcome of where my money's been going". Most people aren't interested in long-term things. Unfortunately, it's all about the now, now, now.

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- N

 

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Privatization is a good plan but you will need massive regulations look at it this way they will odds are use a plain to lift the ship to take off altitude and you think a air liner going 450 miles a hour made a hole in a building what about one going 5 times the speed of sound? Terrorists would love them…. Take off from Middle East cost over to the USA in a 3 hours then when coming into the air port deviate and fire back up the motors and smash into a building… but really I think tanker trucks full of fuel/chem./bio are far worst a threat….

No as for mass production if you going for that then you will really want the small but problem is small ships don’t have the power to get into space they cant carry the fuel for the trip let alone have extra to maneuver and fly around… I think they will have to wait tell fusion is ready and Is scaled down to fit in a small ship 60x30x20 not to big but not to little… here is a little scale 1lb of uranium is = to 10,000 pounds of coal for the amount of energy it can produce… and hydrogen H3 is on a hole much more powerful then that… something like 10-100 times more power then uranium of = weight… but how to make a reactor produce forward thrust…. Here is where the tree hugging hippy’s freak out… if you skim off some of the H3 in a plasma state out of reactor and run it though a small particle accelerator as you know plasma can’t pass though magnetic fields and particle accelerator work with powerful electromagnets we don’t want this big we want it small for safety reasons… so as the plasma that has not fusioned yet is sent screaming down this pip when it gets to the exhaust cone that is magnetic there is a small magnetic field blocking the plasma’s path so it is force to stop well following the plasma is a wave of magnetic energy that has been pushing it down the pipe so it forces the plasma to compress which triggers fusion to take place in the plasma right before it reaches the cone…. So more or less makes a mini H-Bomb going off to power the ship… this is not in one big boom it’s like a car engine where its sending very small shots at a time but very often… so you could get a few 100,000lb of thrust out of a small area with very little ill effects beside when it is running… the only by product of the ship would be H and helium… this should also cover the technology investment you where talking about…

Next one I guess is safety if they did have fusion powered ships then yes safety would be a big problem… terrorists would love having a flying H-bomb waiting to happen… but it would take a lot of work to rig it so that it would set off a large explosion more then just a crash or failure on reentry… it would just be a pain and also you would have to think about the people around where these ships take off from… the reaction is small but still would easy give some one a really bad case of radiation burns if they where under it not to mention the fact that the exit temp of the would be around 15 million degree’s C talk about crispy….


So transportation humm... need private and public forms…. So the poorer people can get into space… and also need cargo hulling…

As for housing I would say pull a rock into geo orbit around the moon or between earth and the moon so that if something goes wrong we don’t have a big rock falling on earth… and dig out the core of it and use that for housing….. build docks on it and such… you could even get a very large one hollow it out and pull smaller near earth objects inside of it to mine for supply’s and ship them back to earth… I personally think that mining will pay for space… in the long run….

As for shops huumm… guess the price of moon rocks will go down… really think about this moon rocks the size or a grape are worth 5 million dollars I think I would send up a probe to get some rocks and ship them back what you would only need like if like 5 pounds of rock and you would bring in around 2 billion dollars in cash… but that would not last to long… but still easy money to fund bigger projects… I think that takes care of what I think we need to make space economical

 

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Shadar - fusion reactions cool down very quickly when they're uncontrolled, because fusion requires extremely high temperature and pressure. Fusion bombs work quite differently from fusion engines (unless you're talking about the Orion drive, but I don't think anyone plans to use that).

As a result, your concern about the SPEED that the craft will go is legitimate, since a mass moving at such high speeds will do a lot of damage even if it's made of marshmallows, but I think the concern about the danger of fusion engines is less warranted.

 

I agree that there is more danger then from raming a target then exploding...

 

Maybe we should tart thinking about our kids and grand kids...

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1. Mass production
2. Investiments in technology

Thanks to mass production, the price dropped, making it affordable and thus raising the number of people buying those products and, in turn, raising the revenue, since as greater the production is, as higher the revenue is and lower the cost is (try graphing cost and revenue related to price and quantity in the same graph). Oh my.... run-on sentecne...
And thanks to technology, those advancements were easier. What incentivated those advacnements was the possibility of profit, in a brand new cost-effective industry.
Do you know how many fiber optic cables e have laid down below BC?

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There is always such a risk. But the reason why we have so many problems is because of our scarce resources. Imagine if the rich countries would have a completely new industry to explore (space industry). Then, the less-fortunate ones would have the present rich industries. This would result in a raising of the living standarts in poor countries, and thus making it less likely for disagreements. Not to mention that in space we have unlimited (or nearly ulimited) resources. If we can collect resources in Jupiter or in one of its moons, imagine that!! Tons and tonsof resources, more then enough for the entire human population! Not to mention that having colonies in other planets would also increse the amount of land avaiable and thus making land more affordable even here, on earth (prices in other planets would probably be cheaper tough...).

Reaching out to space would increase our resources exponentially and thus terminating with the core problem in economics: scarcity of resources.

That's why technological advancements are crucial. If we develop fusion and plasma technology, then we will have almot unlimited energy supply and faster-moving hips. Of course, friction is always a problem with higher speeds, but at least in space there would be no friction and we wouldn't need a speed limit (maybe in the far far future...?).

Exactly! See? I though about everything...

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Yuck, I haven't thought about that. Could we use something to filtrate those things? And safety measures, of course.

Yes, eventually. but let's bear in mind that it takes time for prices to drop. It could be in our lifetime, if people invest a lot of money into it.

Yes, because large quantities of resources would definetely attract many investors.

I wouldn't buy one of those, tough...

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One other thing that I was thinking. Since scarcity has three categories (labour, land and capital), then we would need to work less? I would say so, since by "conquering" space we would have an abundance of land (as long as we have the technology to make it livable) and an abundance of capital (because of all the resources), so labour would be able to decrease...?

 

working less would be nice... but just hope they dont go the easy way and just use less workers to do the same job

 

Yes, indeed....

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Think about it. There is some unemployment. If we would work less we could have evrybody working, couldn't we...?

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But I guess the big corporations are not willing to do that without dropping our salaries...

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Nice links. I especially appreciate the one about space elevators. Elsewhere on this forum (I'm too lazy right now to go and find it) I posted an URL of a company that believes working space elevators could be made in 15 years. A plan exists right now for a near space elevator using presently available materials http://members.aol.com/beanstalkr/project/ . It could be implemented as a way to get payloads into space at a fraction of the cost of leaving from the surface.

I think we have a sociological barrier to making ourselves space based. In general I find human society to be an anarchy with various power groups using lots of dirty tricks and the use of force to decide priorities and the hows and whys of power use, in short, the law of the jungle prevails. Most are unable to grasp this because of the nature of this second order cybernetic system known as society. It is impossible to not get a biased view. Cultural, linguistic, and geographic distinctions have led to various belief ascriptions none the least is the one about there being a scarcity of resources which appears to be a necessary judgment in order to justify huge inordinate differences in liberty, health and security. Members of the largest power groups have carefully constructed a limited "historical" perspective to use as propaganda to justify their own actions as well as take advantage of others. Think about it, how do you reckon your place in the world? Would we map our world topological juxtapositions by country, state, county, city and street? See all of those proper nouns? Consider that a true perspective needs no proper nouns, no names that require interpretation and often mean and imply different things to different people. I suggest starting with your longitude and latitude and incorporate all of the other non-proper noun objects that describe your conditions in order to get closer to a scientifically valid view of where you are and what you can do. I suspect that our information handling technology will and is being turned towards the ability of increasing the efficiency of acquiring and using a totally literate interpretation of where we are. It is in the field of sociology that we may find a way into space, here and now and ever more so in the near future.

I do believe the information explosion is driving us into the state of being where we find that we are already space based. In space the major source of power is fusion, solar energy. Recent research I've posted in other threads on this forum tell me that there is a huge and quite immediately available solar derived energy source on the planet, wind, that could become the major way electricity is produced on the planet. Think of the oligarchies that technology would tumble and realize the inertia to being and growing into becoming a space based civilization. Are you aware of the gardening technology of small intensive biodiverse agricultural methods that appear far more efficient for growing foods? Do agribusinesses help us learn and apply those methods or do they favor few controlling the resources of many, for the sake of amassing the almighty dollar?

Space will come as we lose our collective fantasies and realize we are here.

 

I got the link from that thread...

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Read on. It even says "In 15 years..."

That's interesting. Try saying that to the capitalist lovers in this site... you might get your head choped off...

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It's hard fot them to admit it. They are in a very comfortable position...

Why where we are is so important? Maybe in space we need better coordinate systems (with 3 or 4 variables!), but here...?

I think the oil tycoons wouldn't allow that. Unless they could get in the new buinesess, of course. Too bad people are so greedy...

I gues if we don't get over that, we will finish destroying ourselves before getting into space.... :/

 

"New" Energy Source:
Antimatter Makers Chase Ultimate Energy Source

"With antimatter in the tank, taking the family rocket out for a spin to the nearest M-class planet would be a relative breeze. Miniaturized antimatter fuel might consist of a thumb-sized canister with an energy source no bigger than an aspirin and no need of replenishment for hundreds of light-years -- or, locally, tens of millions of intra-solar-system miles."

Sounds exicting...

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Earth 'will expire by 2050'

 

Planets? PLANETS? WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' PLANETS!

http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSettlement/70sArt/art.html

 

Yeah, sure. But is it healthy for us? The abscence of gravity seems to be bad for us. Also, the absence of shield against dangerous radiations... Unless you could make the space colony rotate at the speed of 9.8m/s to simulate gravity...

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Incoming!! Interstellar Communication and Transportation!!!

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• Entangled clouds raise hope of teleportation
  
  
  "Atoms can be persuaded to interact with each other so that events affecting one instantly affect another - no matter how far apart they are. Dubbed entanglement, this could open the way to superfast quantum communications systems and ways of teleporting objects by instantly transferring their properties from place to place."
  
  
• Quantum wormholes could carry people
  
  
  "All around us are tiny doors that lead to the rest of the Universe. Predicted by Einstein's equations, these quantum wormholes offer a faster-than-light short cut to the rest of the cosmos - at least in principle. Now physicists believe they could open these doors wide enough to allow someone to travel through."
  
  
• 
  Teleporting larger objects becomes real possibility
  
  "The dream of teleporting atoms and molecules - and maybe even larger objects - has become a real possibility for the first time. The advance is thanks to physicists who have suggested a method that in theory could be used to "entangle" absolutely any kind of particle. "

More Information About Wormholes...

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Let's examine why it will be difficult to get entrepreneurs to start a space tourit business. The space shuttle costs about $470 million to launch once(http://ask.achieva.com/spacekids/FAQ_67_430.shtm). One shuttle costs $2.1 billion(http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/ssa/docs/Space.Shuttle/general.shtml). Foregoing any development and trainning costs, the cost to put one tourist in space is about $2.6 billion dollars. That is if you just buy a space shuttle. If you want your own vehicle you need to pay big bucks for development.

So far there have been two space tourists. Two wealthy American businessmen have been into space, Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth. Each paid $20 million to go into space with the Russians.

We could say that at a price of $20 million dollars there are about 2 units of space vacation demanded. Maybe the price is very elastic at this point and you can decrease it a little and make a lot more revenue. Too bad you can only fit a few people on the shuttle. After that you'd need to do another launch. It would be a long shot to get anywhere near the marginal cost of one space launch. Maybe you could build some kind of module in the shuttle bay that would let you carry a large number of people. Maybe about 50. Then each person would only need to pay $10 million dollars and you could cover the launch costs. At that point you would still be losing out because of the massive fixed costs.

Maybe you could send up experiments to make some extra money. Who is going to send up their expensive experimental equipment with a privately owned and inexperienced space firm? I would use the government, which has much more experience in this field.

The point is the government can do this much cheaper. Apparently the marginal cost of sending one extra person into space is $20million or less for the Russians.

You want to look at opportunity costs? What is the opportunity cost of setting up a space firm? What else could you do with $2.6billion? Set up a business that will actually make money. Live a lavish life off interest until you die. Snowboard all the best mountains in the world. Visit every country. Have a huge house and a stable of a prancing horses... in every country. If you are the altruistic type, there are plenty of other things you could spend that money on that would be much more beneficial for humanity. All that space firm does it burn up a bunch of fuel so a few people can look at the earth from far away. The government is doing all the real space research that will result in material benefit.
What is the opportunity cost of each potential customer? With $20 million dollars you could do a little bit of each thing I listed above. Is a short space trip really worth more than all of that?

 

Yeah, sure. But what about the humongous quantities of land and resources up there? Besides, let's compare the undeveloped high cost space industry with the developed once-upon-a-time high cost industries... like the computer industry.

In the beginning, a simple computer would cost millions of dollars to be built, and it would occupy a humongous room. Let's say it would cost $20 million dollars for us to buy it.

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If you would tell someone from the government or military that one day everyone would have a PC in their homes, they would actually laugh at you

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. The same with the internet.

But people got into the business. Actually, if I'm not mistaken, there was a monopoly in the beginning, because the costs of all the competition were greater then the cost of a monopoly, because the supply of the monopoly was bigger. Eventually, the costs got lower, and competition was possible.

It wouldn't have happened without investments in technology and mass production.

There are other comparisons that one could make. For example, it was probably harder for Colombus to come here all the way from Spain, then it is to go to the moon.

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Sure the moon has a lot of land and mineral resources. How much do you think that land is worth? You cannot live there easily. You cannot farm it. There is no point in building restaurants or Wal-mart. If you had a whole lot of moon land you could use it for advertising though.

There are mineral resources, but they would be extremely expensive to get. A moon based mining operation would be very expensive. According to this site(http://www.latinpetroleum.com/article_962.shtml) iron ore sells for about 27 cents per ton. Do you think that iron ore can be mined on the moon and shipped back to the earth for less than 27 cents per ton? It costs $10k dollars just for NASA to launch 1 pound of material into earth orbit. That is only for transportation one way. You would need to develop, build and launch mining robots to the moon first. It seems like even if the moon was made of gold it would still not be economically sensical to mine it.

Trans Lunar Research is a private firm that seems to be attempting what you dream of. Their website is http://www.translunar.org though they do not appear to have a time table, nor to have done much besides publishing some papers and testing some rockets. They claim their launch vehicle can launch one pound for only $200. Given that their website is asking for public donation I am not expecting a lot of success.

The problem is that this space exploration is extremely expensive and as of now there is little benefit. Rational choice theory suggests that businesses will certainly shy away from this. It is simple cost benefit analysis. The difference between this and computers and cars is that those ventures had immediate benefit. Cars though expensive can immediately provide a huge advantage in travel. Computers likewise are immediately useful for all kinds of analysis and data storage that is valuable to business. Establishing a colony on the moon right now would not provide an immediate benefit other than experience and some moon data.

That is not to say it is not a worthy goal, only that it is unlikely for businesses to pursue it or to be successful at raising capital. Would you invest your hard earned money in a company that wants to build a colony on the moon or explore space in other wars? Not by choice, but you are right now through taxes that fund NASA. Space exploration has long term benefits and is probably a public good. Side effects of it will lead to new technology and eventually should make space travel cheaper in general. It will probably be many years before any type of venture to the moon or any other planet becomes profitable.

 

Slaughterist,

I think we could be a little bit more optimist on that...

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The costs are getting lower. It won't take forever to get there.The same was said about computers, cars, etc. The secret is to make it avaiable for the majority of people.

As our technology gets better, the costs will decrease. There are already some private companies trying to get there. Wasn't there a contest to promote private space travel? Why would many people join if it wasn't profitable in any way?

Well... in any case. Fusion, for example, will bring down radically the variable costs of energy (and it won't take too long to pay off the fixed costs). Other things may bring down the cost of transportation. Like teleportation, for example (see an earlier post).

In other words.... the space industry is getting more cost beneficial...

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