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Originally Posted by Ronald Brak
Check out the fuel cost of a shuttle mission compared to the overall cost of a shuttle mission.
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Most parts of the shuttle aren't truly reusable are they? The orbiter has to be pretty much rebuilt every other flight.
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I can think of many stupid things people use oil for today. Making ethanol for one thing. I don't think people will suddenly stop being stupid. But kerosene could certainly be too expensive compared to alternatives.
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Even stupidity gets smacked down by thermodynamics. You won't be able to get hold of enough kerosene for spaceflight when people are demanding the last scraps of oil to run agricultural machine. Hopefully.
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The overall trend has been for electricity to get cheaper. Of course, high coal and natural gas prices have resulted in an upswing lately.
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Electricity is going to get a lot more expensive. The production capacity we have now and are planning is going to be strained past breaking point when we start using it for things we currently use fossil fuels for. Electrolyzing rocket fuel is going to be fairly low on the list of priorities unless we start taking energy seriously (well, unless we did start taking energy seriously about 20 years ago).
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The US used to add over 7% to its generating capacity per year. Now it adds less than 4% a year. There is no reason why it could not increase the growth in generating capacity if it wanted to. Shooting people into space should be less of a hassle than the growth in air conditioning due to its ability to use off peak power.
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Its a little more complex than that. The next generation of nuclear power plants are having trouble already because there is a certain type of steel needed for the reactor vessel that is only manufactured in one place (in Japan IIRC) seeing as people stopped building reactors for a while, just about the time they were getting very safe and efficient.
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Now none of this changes the fact that I think spending good money to be shot into space is a bloody stupid idea. If you want zero gee you are better off flying in a vomit comet. And if you want a spectacular view of the earth from orbit buy a high definition TV. If you both at the same time then put a TV in a vomit comet. Or if you just want to float and see stars there are chemicals that will let you experience that at very low cost.
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Oh, I agree on the economy of exploring inner space rather than outer space, but it would still be nice to think that our children might be able to go into space without being millionaires (although that term will not have the same impact by the time my children are earning money of course). I just think that our societies have placed too much blind faith in the market (or convinced everyone else to whilst a small elite cleans up) and have thus failed to adequately prepare for a sharp drop in energy production coupled with a sharp increase in demand.