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

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

> 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.
>
> This brings up a question of law and administration, of
> course, and who has rights
> to what. That will be a simple matter of contract and treaty
> _until_ someone up
> there sees that they have the resources to become autonomous;
> then the real fun
> begins.
>
> It really looks as if someone's going to have to grab their
> bootstraps and give a
> good yank . . .

Well, you have just synopsized the reasoning of the Commercial Space
Transportation Study
(http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codec/codeci/webmaster/CommSpaceTrans/Index.h
tml) for those of you who are interested.

Lee