Re: RE: Re: RE: starship-design: Depressing news

[KellySt@aol.com]

In a message dated 1/28/98 5:22:43 PM, lparker@cacaphony.net wrote:

>Kelly,
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>
>
>> Ah, I hate top burst your buble, but one thing space station has
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>conclusivly
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>> shown is the impracticality of inmternational projects.  NASA estimates
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>were
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>> that if it had to do the whole spacestation itself.  It would cost NASA
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>about
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>> 10% less then its current cost for its part of the current station
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>program.
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>> International programs bring multinational overhead and contradictory
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>> political goals.  This slows things down a lot, and raises costs.
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>>
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>> For example the US skylab station (in many ways larger and more capable
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>then
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>> the current design) took us 18 months to plan, design, build, and launch.
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>> Regan started this station project in '84.
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>
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>Not only do I agree with your analysis, but if you want to really get right
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>down to it, corporations are working for a profit and really tend to take a
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>dim view of missing deadlines and objectives when missing said deadlines and
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>objectives will cost them money (this neatly exempts most current aerospace
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>contractors, neat how I did that, huh?).
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>
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>Anyway, as I have said before, the ONLY way we are going to get into space
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>to stay is if there exists some clear commercial (profit) advantage to do
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>so. At the moment the only ones I see are mining resources that are either
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>more difficult to get at than on Earth or in more limited supply on Earth.
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>Near Earth Asteroids seem to supply the answer. Not only do they provide an
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>abundance of minerals, but most seem to be in a more concentrated and pure
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>form. As an added bonus, precious metals seem to be a lot more common in
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>asteroids than in the upper layers of the Earth's crust. One good find and
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>you have just paid for your entire development effort.
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>
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>Lee Parker

Agreed!  Thou bringing down a thousand tons of gold or platinum could really
crater the market.  ;)

Kelly