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

[KellySt@aol.com]

> Heh, you're right - I didn't even realize my first statement "10 in
> perhaps 10 years" was pretty much the same speed as my predictions for
> the distant future when I saw Moore's Law kicking in.  Oops.
> 
> The second statement, though, of "100 in 50 years" is definately slower
> than that, though.  If it was the same rate, it would have been "10 in
> perhaps 10 years.  100 in 20 years."
> 
> An order of magnitude every ten years for fifty years is, of course,
> 10^5, or 100,000 times cheaper than today.  That would be pretty cheap
> access to space - it would cost $0.10 - $0.20 per pound to launch into
> orbit.  Cheaper than an airline flight, in fact.  Perhaps in a few
> centuries...

Ah, given current (actully a little dated) tech and a large enough market,
you can drop 2-3 orders of magnitude off current launch costs.  This would
bring launch costs down to the cost of current trans ocean air frieght costs.
 Given these have similar energy requrements, this isn't unexpected.


> On another note, the real Moore's Law says - what?  Computing power per
> unit cost doubles every two years or something like that?  Of course
> that means computing power per unit cost increases by 32 times every
> decade, right?  --

Actually the rate is a little over a factor of 100 per 10 years, and we've
been exceeding that rate for decades.

> --At least our Space Moore's Law is a little more
> conservative, hoping that (whenever it kicks in - IF it ever does) space
> travel would become 10 times cheaper every decade.
> 
> I've read one thing about Vinge's Singularity that fascinates me:
> assuming no limit anytime in the near future on Moore's Law, imagine a
> computer is developed that is as capable and as advanced as a human
> brain... Then what comes two years after that?  How about two years
> after THAT?

Technically we already market super computer with more capacity and power
then teh human brain (estimated at about 14 tera flop/terabyte) and are doing
R&D studies for systems in teh 1,000 Tera flop/byte range.

Kelly