The ongoing thread on NASA returning to the Moon has me wondering if there is a viable economic benefit for a private corporation or group of corporations that would advance spaceflight. I'm thinking beyond the space tourism business which would be limited to the very wealthy. Is there a technology in the fledgling/idea phase or a not-too-distant-future manufacturing process that would be economically beneficial to be created in space or the Moon and be sufficient to override the start-up costs of private corporations venturing into space with minimal or no government support?

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"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." -- Salvor Hardin (Isaac Asimov)

I'd like to challenge the argument that space tourism would be limited to the very wealthy. I expect the cost for suborbital flights will come down quickly. There are quite a large number of people who would be willing to fly if it came down below the $10,000 point.

In my case, I'm not interested in suborbital. However, if orbital flight became generally available and the price dropped to something not completely insane, I would be willing to spend a rather substantial portion of my net worth to fly. For me, this would literally be the dream of a lifetime, and I know quite a few people that have the same dream.

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Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

The first thing that comes to mind is some manufacturing process that can only be performed in very low gravity, although I don't know of any offhand that would be profitable. There may be a profit potential in developing technologies that could be sold when proven - for example, a method of boosting fuel tanks into orbit, then coupling them with a capsule for extended missions.

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"Scientific progress goes 'boink'?"

How's this one. If eventually, some company can develop the capability to have a permanent presence in space with mining capability, you might be in a very good position to design and manufacture telecom satellites and space probes. Suppose you had a manufacturing plant somewhere on an asteroid or something like that. If NASA wanted to send a new probe somewhere, you could produce it minus all the concerns about getting it safely into space. No worry about heat shielding or vibration from the launch.

In reality, though, I think the ultimate reward would be to have a firm foothold in space when permanent colonization begins. Then it sort of becomes a new economy, separated from the earth, and the pioneer would have a lot of power in the subsequent development.

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As above, so below

I agree absolutely, even down to the $10,000 amount. I consider myself upper middle income. My wife and I spent about $3000 each for a trip to Costa Rica this year. I would absolutely spent $10k for an orbital flight.

As far as other economic opptunities.... I know there are some aluminum alloys that can not be made on Earth because of the density differences between aluminum and the other metal, but whose synthesis has been demonstrated in orbit. There have also been studies that show improvements in the production of some drugs. I don't know that either these are big economic opportunities, but if I had to guess I would say they are probably not worth it on a Return-on-Investment basis.

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One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

I would certainly pay something in the low five-figures to go into orbit.

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It's a chicken/egg sort of thing. If you want space to really pay off, you need bulk manufacturing--large, dedicated monolithic stations. But many want those to come later after RLVs--but where do those RLVs get their reason to exist?

If We had built Energiya/Buran--and the Russians had built Columbia STS, our first launch would probably have been a very simple 100 ton Polyus-type space station segment instead of an orbiter. The Zenit Strap-ons would have been EELVs in their own right, and all Titan and Atlas rockets would have been phased out. Five launches and a 500 ton ISS would have been up there, and later 100 ton modules could have been true space factories.

Buran type shuttles would place 20-30 ton cannisters of raw materials, and return with the pallet full of processed goods.

This would have spurred more private spaceflight on a larger scale once a true production line is established.

it's not "build it and they will come' but "come and let us build." In the USA, we used sailing ships, the HLLVs of the day, to transport people and goods by bulk.

Now--here is the kicker:
Once you had destinations established of economic worth--then and only then did you have trains (read RLV/Space Elevator) to go back and forth between developed areas like the industrial Northeast, to the Cotton Belt, to the Breadbasket to the Gold Rush.

The Soviets tried to use trains as actual modes of exploration--and all they did at first was to link one reindeer town to the next--to one iced in port to the next. They used the RLV first--and it didn't work so well away from Ports established by ships.

So the "we need routine space flight first, and larger structures later" doesn't work. You have to have the destination--led by Gov't--later privatized--as with the R-7/Soyuz tourist flights. Gov't came first, and private initiatives later.

But many of the 'space libertarians' are too brainwashed by the CATO Institute to understand that.

Tumlinson, for example (whose pal Anderson is in the pen last I heard--tax evasion I think) writes NASAbash articles in Space News every other week. He and Hudson have absolutely nothing to show for their decades of space privatization thinkspeak. If anything--those familiar with the industry understand Hudson to be the Kiss Of Death of any space project. And their likes do damage.

They think you should start out small and work your way up. They said that if Columbus used the HLLV model--he'd have some giant ship and blah, blah.

Well--that is exactly what he did. And the Chinese especially. He did not try to swim across the Atlantic, then use water wings, then a raft, etc.

But that is the 'start small" approach to spaceflight--which I question. It doesn't work that way. The RLV/X-33/VentureStar approach would have been for Columbus to wait until the resusable Airbus or 787 came along to ride in style to America. The early sailing ships were almost expendables--in that you were lucky if you didn't founder during your first mission in hurricane season. But they paid off.

In WWII, the flyboys thought to fly fuel in to China to fight the Japanese--where the NAVY understood the need to actualy have ships move fuel in bulk. We had airplanes littered all over the mountains with the 'fly fuel in approach'--a lot like the EELV assembly moon missions. Griffin chose the naval approach.

Even Musk has put off the Falcon V to fly Falcon IX first, due to the fact that comsats are getting larger and larger. The microcircuitry revolution backfired, you see. When the first Integrated circuits came along they were fairly simple--but light years ahead of punch-card machines and Eniac-follow ons that were in the hands of a few scientists and technicians.

So you had big slow computers on the ground and the latest chips in space.

But when that tech was used here--it exploded in popularity. Our first liquid-fueled rockets were smaller than those of the Russians--so our circuits were exposed to the space environment--and had to be space-rated, rad-harded, made vacuum-proof, heat-resistant, shock absorbant, etc.

By the time you were done upgrading your 386 to space use--every kid on the block down here has a Pentium IV. And many of these newer computers on the ground want to talk to those slower chips in space.

The only thing for it is to put more of them in Satellites, more circuitry being needed for increased traffic anyway.

Early on, you just stretch out existing Deltas, and the Atlas--and those rockets become more and more overoptimised, while still underpowered--and the payloads still got bigger.

Before long, the comsat grows into a monster, and you wind up having to launch them atop massive Russian boosters.

Their concept, early on, wasn't "Let's shrink the payload" but "Let's make a bigger rocket." So they hollowed out Vostoks and such and put vacuum tubes in them and shot existing tech up there for cheap. These early sats were climate controlled, air conditioned, etc.

So now it takes big Russian rockets to launch our huge comsats every bit as big--if not bigger--than the early Soviet satellites. Even the Saturn IB-class UR-500 Proton is feeling the strain.

Let us take a look at the Ariane V. It was originally built to launch Hermes--a winged spaceplane. It was thought too big for a comsat launcher. But its recent spate of troubles come from the more powerful version because the standard version wasn't powerful enough.

Proton and Ariane V came long before our EELVs, our first big DEDICATED non ICBM boosters. But they came on too late, after the DOT.com bubble had burst and the launch market went flat--due in part to the fact that Soviet/European launchers of adequate boost capability came first--and glutted the market.


This is why I keep harping on about HLLVs. People come up with unoriginal jokes about inadequate phallus size and what not--or think I advocate big rockets just because they are "cool."

The fact is you should always build a rocket bigger than you need it--so you can have margin, and room for growth. Soviet era craft are profitable because they were overpowered and underoptimised, where our over-stretched LVs were overoptimised and underpowered--stick built, and therefore far more expensive.

You don't save money with frequent flights, but by increasing throw-weight per flight--since flight rates seem rather static...inflexible.

In other words--it is better to have too much truck than not enough. The first space entreprenuer to understand and follow this advice will prosper.

Not the ones who think small.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-05zz.html Private HLLVs

Sadly this person is still against Griffin's plan, and still buys into the RLV talks. But now--even the "space libertarians" are finally understanding the value of true Heavy Lift.

Possible economic benefits for private corporations are not limited to one sector of the economy. Think beyond manufacturing. The spectrum ranges from providers of commodities (water, propellants, ores and so on) to manufacturers of good, providers of services and providers of experiences. Companies looking to make money in tourism are on one end of the spectrum. Others looking to help scientists do their science are solidly in the service sector. There are oportunities in each category. Whether they can be done profitably requires more detailed research.

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-al

An other way to make big money and develop spatial activities is to use space as a garbage dump.

As you know there are many dangerous substance on earth , like MDW , dangerous biological or chemical products or waste and of course radiactive wastes.

So build big reliable rocket , build very tough containers able to sustain a drop from an avorted launch , fill the containers with the wastes and put them on orbit. Then a slow ionic or M2P2 booster drive them into planet Venus or the Sun.

Develop space activities and get a clean mother earth all in the same movement !

If one private industry would have the clout to engage in space-flight without government assistance, it would the pharmaceutical companies. And once the "Purple Pill" logo is on the moon, who's going to take it off? Fine the company into oblivion, it would still have the ultimate advertising spot of all time.

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If I'm wrong, you probably asked me the wrong question.

Well, if I think 10,000 bucks is still something for the somewhat weathly, I must be doing much worse than I ever thought!

...great, now my self esteem is real high.



CJSF

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Two years ago moved from my town
I was looking up past the city lights
But the city lights got in my way

See the constellation ride across the sky
No cigar, no lady on his arm
Just a guy made of dots and lines

-from "See The Constellation"
by They Might Be Giants

What kills me is that the same folks who think NASA can't do spaceflight well (the 'space libertarians') are often the same folks who want NASA dollars for air traffic control systems for Very Light Jets (minibizjets) for the very rich.

Let them privatize their own little toys and such before they get into the space arena--which is made with blue-collar thrust, not white collar fantasies.

NASA is a collection of agencies that through an historical accident happen to be under one administrator. We 'space libertarians' would kind of like to see it broken up again so the sections that do necessary work do not get there budgets pilfered by overruns in sections that don't know how to keep their contractors in line.

I have a lot of respect for the people who work for NASA. I have little respect for the collective whole, though, as it is barely able to make efficient use of its deep talent pool and the billions of dollars we use to fund them.

I really like the old NACA model. I really wish NASA (in whatever form it takes) was an exploration agency. It is an excellent way to spend the public's money as we've proven through out our history even back to the early exploration of the Louisiana Territory. Designing space vehicles is not exploration, though. Dictating operational minutia for flights and missions is not exploration either. Providing a list of reasonable requirements to the private sector, funding the expected results and then waiting patiently for us to do our work IS how you start exploration.

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-al

I disagree. The best work was done post NACA when NASA was doing work in house. In fact--the most progress we had was when we went from Redstone/Jupiter to Saturn I thanks to the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. They had a Griffin in the form of a man by the name of General Medaris.

The Vanguard flopnik was a civilian/NAVY contraption based on Viking, when the Redstone was capable of doing the job of launching a very modest satellite. That does not make it the equal of the Sputnik launching R-7, which--outside of the Saturns, was more powerful than any all-liquid fueled we ever had untill the Russian inspired EELV. Those were gov't vehicles--and have been pritatized quite well--because they were the result of the strong man approach of Korolov and Glushko. That approach works.

To break up NASA will only weaken American spaceflight as the ESA continues to build powerful partnerships.

The libertarian approach really means let private industry have a field day. Griffin on the other hand believes in an adversarial approach with the prime contractors who would foist the EELVs upon us--for while the primes have learned some good lessons from the Russians, they still have a ways to go:
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches...ta4_delay.html
As you can see--the curse of SLC-6 is still there.

BTW the Russians kept artillery men in the mix, where we let the Air Force usurp space away from ABMA. They wanted the underpowered Titans, where Saturn IB was an Army Rocket. The test stand for that booster was as a result of a ruse that Medaris had for an upgraded "Redstone test stand" as it were. The Russians kept their Air Force away from space--rightly so--and kept their version of Saturn IB--the hypergolic UR-500 Proton, with its cluster tanks.

It is their best seller--with R-7. Dennis Tito paid 20 million to ride that--not the ME-163 Komet under a spindly learjet that is SS1. The Russians understood raw thrust--blue collar space. The alt.space folks are about 'finesse' and don't understand space. They think if the tack on the word 'private' that that solves everything. I'm here to tell you it doesn't.

Gov't needs to lead--and private industry needs to learn its place and toe the line. A strong man like Griffin with the leadership skills of the ruthless Soviet Chief Designer is what NASA must have.

Apart from Musk (so far) Private spaceflight has been a miserable failure, with empty promises fooling good folks like yourself into thinking that NASA is bad. This is why I distrust the space libertarians so very much: They talk smack and cannot back it up. They fool Proxmire types into thinking NASA is un-needed. Like it or not, Ayn Rands mythology is not the answer. While her fictional architect was building skyscrapers of the mind--hardened men of the Gulag were building the R-7 of reality which soared so much higher.

That is why companies like Boeing and Lockheed, (and Kistler) use their engines. But the companies are run by suits and want to do things on the cheap--and treat space as an ugly stepchild second to their aviation divisions. And Kistler? They look to be quite dead:
http://www.space.com/spacenews/

Let us compare and contrast:

Big Gov't's big boosters

"Soyuz to Launch Globalstar Replacements
PARIS — Mobile satellite-telephone operator Globalstar LLC has signed a contract with the French-Russian Starsem company for the launch of up to four Globalstar satellites aboard Russia’s Soyuz rocket in the first half of 2007, Starsem and Globalstar officials said Oct. 4."

"Telenor Selects ILS Proton M To Launch Thor 2-R
PARIS — Norway’s Telenor Satellite Broadcasting has ended a highly competitive launch-services competition by selecting an International Launch Services Proton M rocket to orbit Telenor’s Thor 2-R telecommunications satellite in late 2007 despite Proton’s higher price compared to a European Ariane 5 ECA rocket, according to industry officials."

Private industries promises--

"Kistler Future Uncertain as Main Backer Withdraws
WASHINGTON — Kistler Aerospace Corp.’s largest creditor and main financial backer is “radically reducing” his investment in the Kirtland, Wash.-based reusable rocket company."

They never learn.

Tourism is the industry. The impact of tourism on the development of aircraft technology and economic globalization has been thoroughly demonstrated. Likewise, space tourism can trigger a vigorous synergy among the various sectors of economy.

We´ll see the economic occupation of space coming in cycles. Other economic activities in space will come in the wake of the concentration of capital generated by tourism. That´s my bet for the moment.

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There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.

I hate to say it--but I just don't see it. Even www.spaceislandgroup.com has gotten away from tourism. Heavy-Lift serving for Defense, exploration and energy production is what needs support. You build a big rocket first as the Russians did and the payloads take care of themselves:

http://spacedaily.com/news/oped-05zza.html

publiusr,

You and I could probably argue about this until one of us is exhausted without convincing the other one. I don't want to engage in that kind of battle, but I do enjoy a good debate. Toward that end I'll keep moving. 8)

It would be a mistake to think the current NASA has the talents it once had during its early years. I know several bright people who work for them. On average, however, they rely rather heavily on their contractors to do the heavy engineering work now. The best progress you describe was a LONG time ago and those people are gone. I've had the pleasure to work with some of them outside NASA, so I know the times have changed. I accept the historical significance of NASA, but it is time to recognize reality and move on.

The aviation research NASA does is still important. It must continue along with space activities. That's rather difficult, though, when their budgets can be raided. Breaking up NASA would free the aviation side without disembowling the space side. I'm sure both would continue to build partnerships as long as it is in their best interests to do so. The combined agency, though, actually has a harder time building those relationships with others when those others can't trust the budget stability of their partner.

Regarding ESA, I'll start caring about them when I think they have chosen to do something other than repeat our mistakes. When they start down the path of commercialization and industry independence a new day will dawn.

Private industry is the most powerful economic force on the planet, let alone in the US. You can't 'let' private industry have a field day. It already dominates the world in so many ways. Smart customers who know what they need and now how to get it combined with smart suppliers who can provide those needs without becoming 'captured' by big customers are what is needed. That combination won't let anyone dictate actions and the relative health of those involved with be improved.

As an example of what I mean, let's look at the recent paying tourists. They paid to get to orbit and for certain experiences once there. They did not pay to ride on one particular rocket or another. Tito originally intended to pay for a ride to the recently privatized and commercialized Mir Station. That didn't work out, so he bought a different experience. In this sense, he was the smart customer who knew what he wanted and did not dictate the minutia for how the suppliers were to make it happen. The suppliers involved a few companies that partnered to make it happen. That combination of customer and supplier is how private industry works. Contracts get written and deliverables delivered.

Don't knock our attempt at finesse. We do not have any 800 lb gorillas in our midst right now. The customers with money aren't used to buying from non-captured companies, so the procedural incompatibilities are what makes it look like we don't understand space. It is the customers, though, that do not understand true private industry. They are far to used to dealing with defense contractors and their unreal world of business. Any time a customer cares more about a supplier's profit margin than they do about the absolute price of a service, they have a terribly warped sense of priority. Federal purchasing rules encourage this distortion, but intelligence can often cut through it.

Your line about private industry knowing it's place suggests you are a hard-line socialist. I doubt I'll change your opinion on that, but you have things exactly bass-ackwards. Space has far more economic potential than the niche served by those looking to protect national security concerns. In no other industry in the US do we tolerate a ruthless central planner. We don't put up with it even in the Defense/War industry. Such an approach is anathema in the US, so don't mind me too much if I snicker at your suggestion.

History is past. You need the space libertarians (as you call us) far more than you need a central planner. Our financial power does not derive from political power, so our perception of risk is different. That perception difference leads to important procedural differences too. Don't place your faith in any one of us, though. Doing that means you don't understand our nature. It is the collective whole that will produce what is needed to open the frontier. Musk is one piece of this whole. Instead of placing faith, think like an investor. Don't put your faith with any company you would not risk money in buying if you could. That is probably most of us and that is perfectly all right. Most companies do not succeed at their goals. The smart investor does their research/homework and then diversifies anyway.

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-al