Big Space Business Numbers 2.0

If numbers get repeated often enough, like in this gallery of commercial space opportunities, they start to be believed. Business 2.0 as part of a big spread on space investment opportunities in their March cover story retells some whoppers.

Space Hotels: $5B/year by 2015

This is inconsistent with Futron and world launch capabilities and expense. First let’s see if someone wins the America’s Space Prize. Expensive travel means very little revenue. By 2025, very possible if space access costs drop. $2M/month would get a lot of takers if we can get 600kg worth of people, spaceship and consumables to orbit at $3000/kg including payload. A Progress at 2000-3000kg of payload lasts 2-3 months with three eaters.

Mars: $400B in exploration by 2030

If you just put NASA spending in line with US GDP growth and put 12 years of it to “Mars” you get about $400B.

Orbital labs: $10B/year by 2015

NASA can’t even come up with a business case to finish ISS. So far the only demand has come from Greg Olsen so he could take a tax writeoff on his vacation. Hmm, maybe it will be a conference destination.

Solar sats: $100B/year by 2020.

You have to beat the marginal cost of hydrocarbons to make money on this. Julian Simon’s Ultimate Resouce 2 indicates heavily against this. Methane hydrates, coal and uranium would have to be taxed to a standstill (which is not impossible) for this to be this big. Space elevators flip it.

Space elevator: $2B/year by 2021

If it works much bigger. It will probably be bigger than solar sats or asteroid mining. Without competition, almost all profits from solar sats and asteroid mining will accrue to the elevator owner.

Asteroid mining: $10B/year by 2030

The space access and demand curve math does not really work except for local consumption in space. But it would be a great place to colonize along with the Moon and Mars.

Moon: $104B in exploration by 2018, $250B in helium mining by 2050

The exploration comes from extrapolating the NASA budget: good bet; the He3 requires us to run out of uranium or patience for it. Not likely.

Microsats: $1.5B/year by 2018

Likely an underestimate as miniaturization, space access costs and dedicated launchers for microsats come into their own

Space Tourism: $1B/year by 2023

This will be bigger than hotels, which is not to say that it will be more than twice Futron’s prediction repeated here. (The factor of 2 selfishly comes from games. The transport to and from the hotel is more expensive than the hotel stay.)

Leavin’ On A Jet Plane

…don’t know when I’ll be back again, but my return reservation is for Friday night. I’m off to Califor Nye A early tomorrow morning, and may be too busy to blog, as there are a lot of deliverables due this week, on top of the CEV proposal work. But I’ll try to check in tomorrow.

Leavin’ On A Jet Plane

…don’t know when I’ll be back again, but my return reservation is for Friday night. I’m off to Califor Nye A early tomorrow morning, and may be too busy to blog, as there are a lot of deliverables due this week, on top of the CEV proposal work. But I’ll try to check in tomorrow.

Leavin’ On A Jet Plane

…don’t know when I’ll be back again, but my return reservation is for Friday night. I’m off to Califor Nye A early tomorrow morning, and may be too busy to blog, as there are a lot of deliverables due this week, on top of the CEV proposal work. But I’ll try to check in tomorrow.

A Reusable Indian Vehicle?

It doesn’t sound like a smart design to me, though:

The first stage is configured as a winged body system, which will attain an altitude of around 100 km and deliver nearly half the orbital velocity. After burnout, the vehicle will re-enter the earth’s atmosphere and will be made to land horizontally on a runway, like an aircraft.

In the second stage, after delivering the payload, the vehicle will be made to re-enter the atmosphere and will be recovered using airbags either in sea or land.

No description of the first-stage propulsion, but if Clark Lindsay (from whom I got the link) is right, and it’s a scramjet, that’s a huge mistake. And an ocean recovery with airbags? Please.

Of course, what do you expect from a government? And at least they haven’t bought into the current nonsensical conventional wisdom that “Shuttle proved that reusable vehicles don’t work.”

The Fragility Of Science

Some sobering thoughts, and a warning to Daniel Dennett, from John Derbyshire:

Science is…a fragile thing, and might easily be lost. (The same applies to math. Readers of, ahem, my forthcoming book will learn about a key development in mathematical thinking that was discovered in ancient Alexandria, then lost, then rediscovered 1300 years later.) It is my belief in this fact that makes me so defensive of science, and so hostile to obscurantist thinking, under which heading I include both Left Creationists like Wieseltier and Right Creationists like the “intelligent design” crowd. They are playing with fire. So, by their absurd provocations, are the village atheists like Dennett. If we lose science (again?), we shall be plunged back into a world far less comfortable, far darker and crueller, than this one. If the LCs and the RCs join forces, they might just possibly bring on that world… if the Islamofascists don’t beat them to it.

The natural tendency of human beings is to think religiously. Science and math are deeply unnatural activities, favored by only a scant few, who could easily be rounded up and dispatched by a mob of more normal human beings. Scientistic triumphalism of the Dennett variety is therefore foolish. An attitude of respectful humility by the more-scientifically inclined towards the more-religiously inclined is not only intellectually proper (at any rate to those of us non-Dennettians who think that religious belief is intellectually respectable, and that the reality of human nature should be faced honestly), it is prudent.

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