Re: starship-design: Infrastructure in space [was: FTL travel...]

[Zenon Kulpa <zkulpa@zmit1.ippt.gov.pl>]

> From owner-starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu Fri Apr 21 18:02:13 2000
> From: Ben Franchuk <bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca>
> 
> Curtis Manges wrote:
> 
> > This is all going to be tricky, I think. The commercial/industrial-scale
> > infrastructure will be needed to establish and maintain settlement and
> > profitability, but nobody will want to pay for it all up front, and I don't see > > how
> > it could become profitable until it's established -- a catch-22 of sorts. But once
> > it is established, there will be a market shift; first profits will go dirtside to
> > pay the investment, but then the settlement will become its own internal market,
> > like a new country, and these profit exchanges will overlap somewhat.
> 
> Until we get the transportation infrastructure in place none of this
> can happen. In some cases the structure is easy to set up, like rail
> roads. In the 1800's railroads use coal,and steel. more railroads
> more coal and steel you need, to make more coal and steel you use
> more trains requiring more umm coal and steel.
> 
Yes, but besides coal and steel, there were also other goods 
that benefitted from being transported by railroads
(not speaking of other uses of steel and coal) - and it was 
they that really fuelled the cycle. Nothing of the sort is visible
in space industry today. Tourism? I doubt it...

> It seems like everybody is develping new rocket motors, but nobody is
> using them. Lets pick a design and get it to work, if Mr Ford waited 
> for the best car design we all would still be walking.
> 
> Get it to work, then refine it.
>
The problem is, there is still no market for use of heavy lift rockets -
the kind needed for building our infrastructure - which were already 
developed in numbers, starting from Saturn V, through Russian Energia 
to French Ariane 5. They were/are here to take, but some already went 
to scrap heap and others are on the straight road to it... 
Just nobody has enough of heavy cargo to sustain their operation 
and refinement.

-- Zenon Kulpa