We start with the richest among us only able to afford a few minute or a few days in space. As we get richer and space gets cheaper, we can have space studios, then space apartments, space mansions, space palaces and space shopping malls. People live where they are. The spectrum from tourism to settlement is just a measure of time. Where does space tourism leave off and space settlement begin? Two-week time shares are probably tourism. One-way tickets, definitely settlement. What's the down payment on a one-year lease?

This has been pointed out before , see A Space Roadmap on the SSI site. And, just think, it all starts out with the little suborbital spaceships.

There is, however, great resistance to recognizing the truth of the argument. Everyone seems to want a big government program... Give me a call, Sam, I think I need you for a panel at ISDC.

Down payment on a 1 year lease? That would be $100,000,000,000, please.

To settle, there has to be a permanent, or at least semi-permanent income source. Cities on Earth sprung up more or less spontaneously - at river junctions, along trade routes, next to oil terminals, ect. I doubt cities could be well founded by decree, or with tourism specifically in mind.

And, just think, it all starts out with the little suborbital spaceships.

Buy Russian carrier rockets, i.e. cheap!

Put some infrastructure on the moon and NewSpace has the incentive to go from little suborbital spaceships to something more interesting much more quickly.

Actually space tourism did not start with "little suborbital spaceships", it started with rich folks buying rides on those evil government program built rockets. In fact, thus far, no tourist has rode a privately built suborbital spaceship. I expect that to change, but lets not get the horse before the cart.

To settle, there has to be a permanent, or at least semi-permanent income source.

What is the permanent, or at least semi-permanent income source for the inhabitants of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, or Aspen, Colorado? And before you say skiing or tourism, be aware that relatively few of the residents (particularly the wealthy ones) derive their income from that. In fact, in Jackson, most of the workers who service the industry can't afford to live there, and commute over the pass from Idaho.

We're a rich planet. We can afford a space settlement that does not pay its own way for a while. How long do we support children before they support themselves?

My estimate for a one-year lease is that yes, it is residency if not citizenship (despite what the universities do to out of state students). One Bigelow hotel, one Falcon 9 heavy or a heavy lifter from overseas, one Progress full of consumables and one round trip would be closer to one billion than one hundred billion. Only 750 of us can afford to move if I'm right, but that will change and eventually one of us will.

How long do we support children before they support themselves?

For a considerably shorter time than NASA has already existed.

More to the point, there are plenty of investments that pay off on a timescale of a decade or two (if not faster). Investing in something with a much longer payback time will be economically unsound unless the ultimate return is a very large multiple of the investment.

Short-term thinking is often slammed by space advocates. I think this has more to do with the failure of space investments to successfully compete with shorter term opportunities rather than any defect of short-term thinking itself.

"...rich folks buying rides on those evil government program built rockets."

What understatement, considering that all the (paying) tourists have ridden on rockets originally designed, by order of the biggest mass murderer in human history, to kill millions of Americans etc. per pop.

A smaller but significant irony--if Stalin's government had worked a little more smoothly, Sergei Korolev wouldn't have survived 1939.

History's funny, isn't it?!

> Buy Russian carrier rockets, i.e. cheap!

No, Bill, Russian carrier rockets are not cheap. Cheap does not mean "enormously expensive," no matter how many times you and Dennis say it does.

Well, Cosmosopolis C-21 might be cheap, but that's suborbital so you and Dennis consider it politically incorrect.

> Put some infrastructure on the moon and NewSpace has the incentive to
> go from little suborbital spaceships to something more interesting
> much more quickly.

Infrastructure that's so expensive no one can afford to use it. Just like KSC, ISS, and all the other "cheap" infrastructure NASA has built.

If you think a lunar base that no one can afford is more interesting than widespread human spaceflight, that says a lot about your priorities.

Dennis has said he sees a future where 3,000 people a year may fly in space -- 40 years from now. That's his "optimistic" scenario.

Only 3,000 people a year by 2045 represents a pathetic growth rate. 2045 will be more than 80 years after the start of the Space Age. Aviation didn't take 80 years to advance to the point of flying a few thousand. It did that in a little over 8 years.

That's why those of us who want to see non-pathetic growth rates must reduce the cost of access to space -- no matter how mad it makes you and Dennis. :-)

Edward, I agree Russian lift is not cheap based on what will eventually come in the future.

It is the cheapest lift we can fly today.

Regardless of the cost of Earth-to-LEO, lunar LOX is a vital component of opening up the moon as is a reuseable lunar lander. Throwing away an LSAM is even more foolish than littering the Atlantic with hardware.

The transcontintental railway wasn't build one way. Track was laid down going west towards California and east from California and when they met the Golden Spike was driven into place.

Russian lift is the cheapest route to deploy lunar LOX production and a re-useable LSAM and when genuine CATS NewSpace Earth-to-LEO comes on line they can meet at EML-1 for a huge party.

> Edward, I agree Russian lift is not cheap based on what will eventually
> come in the future.

> It is the cheapest lift we can fly today...

What's your point, Bill? Do you claim that you are going to deploy a lunar LOX system today? Next week? Next year?

No, NASA's plan is to deploy it some time after 2018. Probably long after. That's at least *13 years* from today.

> Regardless of the cost of Earth-to-LEO, lunar LOX is a vital component
> of opening up the moon as is a reuseable lunar lander.

No one said it wasn't. But some of us would like to develop lunar landers and LOX plants that can be deployed *affordably*, so they can actually produce value.

> Russian lift is the cheapest route to deploy lunar LOX production

Only with the ridiculous stipulation that the lunar LOX plant must be deployed today. (Ridiculous because you don't have a lunar LOX plant today, or even a program for building one.) It is not the cheapest route to deploying one 13 years from now. Unless you add the even more ridiculous stipulation that we must do nothing to reduce the cost of space transportation in the next 13 years.

>>"I doubt cities could be well founded by decree, or with tourism specifically in mind."

Dubai anyone?

I've always been a big promoter of the space settlement concepts of Gerard O'Neill. But one legitimate criticism is that the concept is dependent on SPS, which must be a colossally huge project to remain economical. It's pointed out that it would be much better if there were some more terraced approach to SPS.

But space tourism might provide that much-needed terraced approach. Things along the line of Island One might evolve slowly and incrementally as a series of graduated improvements to space hotels, rather than springing full-blown from a single project as originally envisioned.

But one legitimate criticism is that the concept is dependent on SPS, which must be a colossally huge project to remain economical.

This is true if the satellites use microwaves. But laser efficiency has increased steadily in the decades since O'Neill's book, and with a bit more improvement (and improvement in laser cost) laser SPS could become practical. This would radically shrink the size of the system, since the minimum practical power level of the satellite is proportional to the wavelength of the radiation used in the beam, at fixed beam areal power density.