> David S. F. Portree
> I’m actually surprised that NASA is bothering with this.
> What’s the story behind it, I wonder?==

Largely to try to justify the station. It was sold as a orbiting research center with great potential, and a way to leverage the Russians into focusing on space rather then selling advanced (including WMD) weapons to the third world. Obviously the later failed, and there’s virtually no research being done on the station. Frankly most of the capacity to do research on it was deleted for budget reasons.

So they likely were hoping since the russians are making a killing flying tourists to the station, they could find commercial research interest. If so that would justify the station. Otherwise we’ll likely pull out of it after finishing “honoring our commitment to the ISS partners”.

> It’s actually dangerous to our future in space to keep justifying
> spaceflight in terms of profitability. There’s nothing we can
> do that will justify the cost and risk to crew. If we see it
> as something that we simply should do because it’s worthwhile
> for itself, then we can justify a great deal. ==

That’s the most dangerous and historically ineffective justification for space around!! We have spent vast amounts on space. Each year the budget for the shuttle program could by a new aircraft carrier or two, fleets of new bombers or fighters, whole new major airports etc. We simply don’t spend that kind of money, decade after decade, for something that doesn’t show results. Currently NASA is considered justified largely due to its pork, jobs in districts, which we space advocates have to a degree encouraged; and for national braging rights. But there are easier ways to spread pork around, and they don’t entail killing elite crews in spectacular manors; and with more nations and commercial entering space, its less impressive to brag about.

If space doesn’t start showing some practical benefit it simply won’t be continued. As a younger female poster on another thread noted, to her generation space is simply boring. It doesn’t do anything. Its virtually done nothing new in her lifetime. More comsats, recon sats, NASA to orbit, and soon another Apollo-ish program like in her grandparents days. And Congress is responding to this lack of interest. Shuttles ending in 3 years. Aries/Orion replacements are being under funded, and funds to buy seats on Soyoz to the station are being extended. So signs suggest Congress is keeping open the option to shuit down NASA manned launch capacity and station. Effectively gutting NASA and eliminating all its political worth.

Space needs to prove its value quickly.

I’m actually surprised that NASA is bothering with this. What’s the story behind it, I wonder? Funneling money into a congressional district someplace? Somebody’s girlfriend/boyfriend needs a job?

It’s actually dangerous to our future in space to keep justifying spaceflight in terms of profitability. There’s nothing we can do that will justify the cost and risk to crew. If we see it as something that we simply should do because it’s worthwhile for itself, then we can justify a great deal.

By now I’m sure this has at least been pointed out to you, but:
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn12135-few-outsiders-sign-on-to-use-space-station-for-research.html

NASA put out an announcment last week that they would be offering governments and corporations what amounted to ‘free’ space on the ISS to conduct experiments and research. The ‘reaction’ from the international community and industry has been, well… lacking.

I’d be interested on your ‘take’ on this. I need to probably point out a few ‘caveats’ though;

The ISS is actually poorly designed for research as I’ve mentioned before. Experiments in Protien Crystal growth for example need highly stabilized environments with no outside ’shocks’ for anywhere from hours to weeks. On average the ISS thrusters fire every couple of minutes due to activity inside the station. The same conditions have pretty much ‘ruined’ all previous experiments aboard the Shuttle. This has not changed, and is likely not GOING to change.

The ISS does not have much ‘room’ or life support capacity for ‘extra’ personnel so the ‘offer’ to host other nations astronauts doesn’t seem to actually ‘offer’ all that much actual utility. In addition the chances are that any ‘experiments’ will have to be highly automated because the ISS crew won’t have time to ‘babysit’ experimental packages or the expertise to monitor and adjust experiments. So this ‘offer’ seems so far to be a recent re-offer of the “Get-Away-Express” experiment package offered by NASA during the early flights of the Shuttle. With even less support.

I’m really not surprised that there has been a ‘lack’ of reaction to the offer, nothing that has been said so far is what has been near what has already been identified as the ‘needs’ for commercial experimentation.

Randy

The tourist flights get the most press, which is perhaps understandable, given the drama, the fact that they involve people, and their appeal to the American ideological mythos. That’s basically what I’ve been writing about in these posts. Of course, we’ve also discussed Bigelow’s inflatables. Folks have touted a lot of money-making space projects - growing protein crystals, satellite constellations for mobile phones, space elevators - but these efforts haven’t gotten very far, for their either easier and cheaper to do on Earth using non-space techniques or their ahead of their time and make optimistic assumptions. There’s space communications and Earth observation, for decades the real money-makers. And my favorite, burying the dead in orbit.

No, I haven’t replied to the oceans and Antarctica comment. I’ll have timne this weekend to get caught up (I hope).

So take the fixed development costs and support infastructure costs, and divide them over hundreds of craft and hundreds of thousands of flights a year, and the cost per is a lot less then if you spread it over 6 craft and 5-5 flights a year.

So the rockets don’t get the level of effort to develop, test, and economize.

So newer tech helps a lot, but if you don’t find a real sizable market for your wahtever, it won’t effect you costs much.

Final question, and then I promis to show my hand - You’ve mentioned a few things NewSpace is selling as profit (IE sub-orbital space tourist flights) - what other products/services do you know of that the NewSpace companies are going for? Not what you think are viable, just what they are going for - btw, I am curious - have you looked at Randy Campbell’s reply to you concerning colonizing the ocean floor, or antartica?

There coluld be more commercial opportunities at some point, maybe, but they will require a big infrastructure investment. We’re still in the “government does the pioneering” stage.

So, if one wants to profit in space, one needs to do something the government wants to pay for.

I see space exploration as being like the arts. We should support it because it’s what our civilization will be remembered for when all the businesses and contracts and entrepreneurs are dust, and because it elevates and inspires us. Of course, it has only occasionally been about that, but it *should* be. There are many, many things people do that aren’t wildly profitable but are worthwhile, and space exploration is one of them.

Frankly, I’m mystified by the obsessive concern over making money in space that some people have. It’s been an undercurrent for a long while, but it’s really bad right now. I hear from people all the time who think space exploration is bad and should stop because it’s not profitable in terms of dollars and cents.

I have nothing against people making money. But it’s not the only (or even the main) reason to go into space.

The big companies might have a chance to make this work, for all the reasons you give. I still think that space tourism is a long shot, however. As you say, we’ll have to wait and see.

I am pretty sure that Rutan has some idea what he’s doing, at least as far as the engineering is concerned. My post was aimed mainly at the space commerce cultists, the old L5ers, who generally have no clue and are unpleasant to be around. I really do wish they’d educate themselves, if possible. It would elevate the discourse, if nothing else; it might even enable them to make a meaningful contribution.

Ferris, no problem about moving your questions to this post. It all depends on what you want to launch. If you want to launch people you don’t mind killing, then that’d be cheaper than if you want to launch people you’d like to keep alive.

From where I sit right now, I don’t see the demand being sufficient to foster investment in technologies that would yield a major reduction in launch costs for cargo. The cost of safely launching people is likely to come down quite a bit in the U.S., but only because the Shuttle is such an obscenely costly beast.

Space access is pretty cheap right now, given the type and level of demand that exists. I don’t think that human spaceflight will be “safe” for some time to come, at least compared with other forms of transportation. Again, the demand is not great enough to justify the investment required to yield airline-type safety levels. Spaceflight will be a lot like visits to the ocean abyss for a couple of decades yet, maybe longer.