RE: RE: RE: starship-design: Space Money

["L. Parker" <lparker@cacaphony.net>]

On Saturday, November 15, 1997 1:15 PM, David Levine 
[SMTP:david@actionworld.com] wrote:
> Ah, SSTO's.  One day.... one day....
>
> Hey, there's an interesting question/poll: If we accept that cargo costs
> are $10k-$20k per pound right now, how many years does everyone think it
> will take to reduce that cost by a factor of 10?  100?  (Factor of 10
> gives average size companies the ability to pursue space projects.
> Factor of 100 gives well-off individuals or groups of individuals to
> pursue such projects.  I suppose factor of around 10000 makes it is
> cheap as an airplane flight.)
>
> My guesses: 10 in perhaps 10 years.  100 in 50 years.  After that I
> think costs will drop dramatically - perhaps we'd start seeing something
> akin Moore's Law for space travel.  You know, once the average company
> is exploiting space, ten years later costs would be reduced by ANOTHER
> factor of ten.  Then ten years later ANOTHER factor of ten, and so on.
> Wishful thinking, I know - but I think we can all agree that when there
> are a bunch of private companies actually -out there-, making good
> money, that we'll see an explosion in space technology.

If we are going to make our timetable of 50 years then we had better hope 
that Moore's Law kicks in TODAY. We need an order of magnitude reduction 
every ten years for the next fifty years in order to make it...

Lee