starship-design: Finances

["jakesmiley" <jakesmiley@netzero.net>]

Hello...

    I'm missing the connection between airplanes and space travel.  What
makes you think that they can be compared correctly?  I think Toxic Roach
pointed out the difference between space travel and flying best when he
said, "people do it [flying] to get where they need/want to go".  You might
have people want to go into space, but I doubt that anyone will ever _need_
to go.

    Also, airlines have always suffered the repercussions of accidents.
People don't stand in line for an airline that kills its customers.  The
reason you don't usually hear about the airline industry going bust every
time there's an accident is because, typically, only one airline suffers.
Demand for their services shifts to competing airlines (competition, ain't
capitalism great?).  Unless, of course, the airline that suffered the
accident is the only provider of services in a given area (market monopoly,
don't capitalism suck?).

    So, without providing a _necessary_ service, any space travel agency
(hah, hah, hah) would suffer greatly from any accident (or scare!).  People
don't _have_ to travel in space, and after an accident they probably
wouldn't want to either.  Crashes are only an accepted risk when people have
no other choice.

    Anyway...  I guess I should reconsider my position on the novelty of
spaceflight.  Not because of Las Vegas, no the secret of Las Vegas is greed
and lust.  Spaceflight has no potential payback for tourists, and sex in
space ... well, you'd really have to be into bondage to make that work.
Actually, I'm thinking about Paris and other European cities of note.
Dirty, crime-ridden, and just about as cramped.  The food is usually
terrible, the people tend to be rude, and you're never allowed to touch
anything.  Yet people come back from these trips saying what a wonderful
time they had...  So maybe spaceflight wouldn't wear off quite as I thought.

    I have my doubts about those surveys that say most people want to go.  I
talk to people about it and their first response is always, "Wow.  That'd be
neat."  However, if you keep talking to them you'll discover that they don't
even consider it a possibility.  How accurate can these surveys be?  The
people taking them are all thinking about Star Wars-type accommodations
anyway.  They never stop to think about the reality of the situation.
(Given the outreach programs abounding today, I find ignorance of what space
travel is like intolerable.  Like those Navy guys who launched a satellite
with a fan in it so they could cool their processor.)

    C'mon...  It's a war on the other side of the world, where we're bombing
a country forward into the stone-age.  Morally, sure it's a big thing.  But
from a service provider POV, this shouldn't be such a big deal.

    I don't understand the ocean liner question.  Are you trying to say the
fact that you offer an exclusive service will allow you to survive?

    Not enough bandwidth?  What are we trying to do?  Play UT on a LAN
system?  ;]  I'm talking about raw data.  No pictures, no sounds, no perks
whatsoever.  Distributed computing isn't for the users, it's for data
crunching.

-JS