Re: starship-design: Finances

[Zenon Kulpa <zkulpa@ippt.gov.pl>]

> From owner-starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu Thu Jan 31 09:29:26 2002
> From: "jakesmiley" <jakesmiley@netzero.net>
> 
>     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.
> 
If his/her business will be in space (a space hotel, or a mine 
on the Moon...) he/she will need.

>     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?).
> 
Monopolies don't last long if they are not supported by governments.

[...]
>     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.
> 
Consider also the art of creation of fads and fashions.

>     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.)
> 
Really? Do you have some source & details, it would be nice
as a piece of space humor.

>     C'mon...  It's a war on the other side of the world, where we're 
> bombing a country forward into the stone-age.  
>
Wrong - the opposite is true. Talibs were on the straight road
into the stone age; bombings actually turned Afghans back from 
that way. Consider the history of Japan & South Korea 
after the WW II and compare them with, say, North Korea.

> Morally, sure it's a big thing.  But
> from a service provider POV, this shouldn't be such a big deal.
> 
Wait a while, the business there gets now a chance for a big start.

>     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.
> 
Wow, for the data-crunching's sake? I always thought the data crunching
is for the users. Not to say that pictures & sounds are also
data as good as any other, often requiring quite much crunching...

-- Zenon Kulpa