Clark Lindsey notes an encouraging trend in discussion about space:

...both Bezos and Musk (in other articles) cite the long term goal of space settlement as one of the primary motivations for their projects. In the past year I've seen a rise in the visibility and credibility of space settlement as a motivation for human spaceflight rather than simply exploration and science.

About time.

Musk "does not compute" for me. The booster market is saturated with cheap Russian and Chinese stuff, yet he spends over 100mill to build a small payload booster he says he's going to sell for 6 mill a pop? So assuming he launches 15 of these under a government contract he still doesn't make his investment back, and now he's designing a larger version to go after the EELV "market"? Assuming he puts Bolock out of business completely he's going to launch maybe 3 or 4 a year of those puppies, so where's the profit?

Presumably, he is assuming that the market is elastic. Six million for a launch is pretty damn cheap, even compared to the Russians and Chinese.

So, we could say that he is not only finally making it affordable to eat the 'pie in the sky', he is also making it bigger!

A genuine program to initiate settlement would create orders of magnitude more demand than exists currently. Such demand is one route to finding the customers needed to stimulate investment in genuine low cost lift to LEO.

Tourism is another. Rather than "either/or" why not both?

But its still chickens and eggs. Lower costs creates more demand yet more demand is needed NOW to overcome a saturated market. And low cost Russian & Chinese launchers remain the 600 pound elephant that makes it pretty darn risky (financially) to invest serious money in cheap access to space. How many com-sats flew on "made-in-America" rockets over the past few years? Remember, Atlas V has Russian engines.

As Elon Musk has said: the best way to make a small fortune in the launch business is to start with a large one. . .

I look at tourism as 'midwife' to settlement. If tourism becomes big, it will remove the giggle factor from settlement and solidify its position in the public conscience.

I look at tourism as 'midwife' to settlement. If tourism becomes big, it will remove the giggle factor from settlement and solidify its position in the public conscience.

Exactly!

"Musk 'does not compute' for me."

Yet there is already a market for more expensive vehicles in the same class?

Musk is a true hero regardless of the outcome, but I'm cheering for his success. It's time to establish a toehold of permanent settlements which is a vision I certainly support. His success will bring that closer to reality.

He doesn't need a large flight rate, although that would be nice. All he needs are enough customers willing to pay for the capabilities he intends to provide. Keep in mind he only has a small staff to support, not a shuttle sized army.

Today, he is a hero to a few. Someday he is going to be a well known hero in the popular press because of providing in conjuction with others a means for settlement of space.

I'm not much for being a fanboy, but I greatly admire the risks he's taking. I'm sincerely hoping his gamble pays off.

"Yet there is already a market for more expensive vehicles in the same class?"

So what? If he loses money with each launch he's a fool. Actually, this is deja vu all over again. The last time it was a fellow who was going to put everyone in their own airplane for the price of an economy car. That fellow was Jim Bede, and you might find his story interesting.

"Presumably, he is assuming that the market is elastic. Six million for a launch is pretty damn cheap, even compared to the Russians and Chinese."

Well, if Musk can do it for 6 mill (I doubt that very much BTW) then the Russians and Chinese should be able to do the same if they want. Their systems are already developed and tested and the cost of their engineering and technical personel is far less than here. Right now, they're pricing based on the market, but I have no doubt they could go lower, possibly much lower.

This is indeed the problem with the space launch market - recooping the initial investment is seen as very tricky because your competition is funded by a government, so they have no need to earn back their initial investment. So in order to defeat them you must make your cost of capital (say 10% of the total funding per year) plus your incremental cost lower than the competition's incremental cost - tricky!

That's why the people that are doing now are not doing it in hopes of quick riches - they love the game. This is a good thing - and really even makes sense economically for them since once you get to a certain point you have to create cool things if you want to own cool things. (Eventually as that is left is to grow the pie!)

Of course, my business plan involves me making unholy mountains of cash - but hey, somebody has to do it!

I believe that Elon has stated on more than one occasion that one of his primary motivators for costs and customers is a "responsive launch capability". That is, being able to put a satellite into orbit within a few hours of request, rather than a few days. Pardon my ignorance if I'm wrong, but is that kind of responsiveness available with Russian or Chinese launchers?

I'm hoping Musk succeeds. However, I fear he has underestimated costs and difficulty and overestimated markets. Not that this is unusual with alt.space people; there's a selection effect where those who put their money down tend to be on the optimistic end of the curve.

Now, about settlement: I do think this should be acknowledged as a goal, but it should also be acknowledged just how far away it is. If it's sufficiently far away, does it have much relevance to what gets done now? Musk will succeed or fail not because settlements are built, but because near term markets do or do not exist in sufficient size to allow him to recoup the investment.

If he makes a per-launch profit (ignoring ROI) and the demand goes up significantly he will be personally successful even if he never gets his investment back. Of course return of his investment has some significance but it is only a portion of his personal fortune which he decided to invest in a paradigm shift rather than a money making scheme.