Re: starship-design: FTL travel

[KellySt@aol.com]

In a message dated 4/17/00 9:11:53 PM, clmanges@worldnet.att.net writes:

>>  That is too small to deliver nuclear
>> >war heads for the military, put man into space for NASA, or deliver
>> >stuff
>> >for Communications,
>
>Say, isn't the majority of commercial space business expected to be in
>launching/servicing comm sats? If your launch system can't handle this,
>you lose
>a lot of market . . .

True and another good reason for larger launchers.



>> but is the right size to build things in space,
>> >because
>> >it is the size ordinary people can still grasp and use.
>>
>> Hate to tell you but in space you can lift and move tons by hand, and
>its
>> very expensive and dangerous to break down large thinks into many small
>parts
>> for on site assembly.
>
>I had to wonder about this one, too. I think you'd be making a project
>more
>expensive by having to send it up in lots of small parts; more complex
>design,
>and I'm sure that labor costs for assembly will be, well, out of this world.
>;-)
>This makes me wonder if there's some way to calculate a cost-break for
>modular
>assemblies. This would tell you that the cheapest approach would be so
>many
>chunks of such a size; more smaller ones or fewer, bigger ones would cost
>more.
>Anyone done that yet?

Except the transport headaches, building it in as few parts as possible is 
always vastly superior, safer, and cheaper!  Course if you can't lift it in 
that form, your out of luck.



>> Kelly
>
>Curtis

Kelly