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Re: starship-design: Fwd: Space tourist projections for 2030



KellySt@aol.com wrote:
> 
> Bit of an artical opn space tourism.  Interesting artical if you want to
> check out the URL.
> 
> Kelly
> 

 That is a lot of travel out there or Up there by 2030.
 Is the monolithic system of current space design
 to ridged to work is my question for the day.

 Thinking about this quickly and all the plans I have seen
 call for big space hotels. Giving a transport shuttle
 a crew of 2 and 14 passengers or a cargo mass
 2500 lbs with a heavy launch booster for the hotel 
 this does seem to me the wrong way to go because the overall
 scale is too large. Hotel chain X builds a hotel
 in space but can't adapt to a new market ( made in space yo-yo's
 for example  ) because the it is scaled up for something else.
 Big projects want bigger boosters, that can't be tested.

 No private group has the vision for a long range goals
 and the large groups consider this too small a investment return.
 I think we need to create the market now for everybody
 and have payloads ready in sync with the launch vehicles.

 My own ideas on the subject is the Spudnick-1 capable
 of putting 200 lbs of payload ( say potatoes ) into orbit.
 With a air launch I guess a 3% payload to fuel ratio...
 9.7 tons of space plane... Now if I had some land on the west 
 coast of africa and a solar farm for h20 into H2 & O.
 I would be set assuming I could fly the launch plane.
 Fight controls would be simple auto pilot. Complex flying
 for space docking would be done by a docking shuttle
 ( microwave powered H2 rocket ) that grabs the space plane
 and brings it in as well as the last stage of thrust.

  A lot of flights to do anything but I guess ( Big guess )
 the cost of such a vehicle would be about $ 250,000 not
 counting labor and red tape. Something a small group of
 families could run. With fuel free the cost is time and overhead.

 Ben.