starship-design: Wanted: 'Space Depot' For The Rocket Builders

["L. Clayton Parker" <l_parker@cacaphony.net>]

Wanted: 'Space Depot' For The Rocket Builders
by Joe Latrell
Colorado Springs - Dec 30, 2003

I am a builder. My family, have for generations built things. Homes,
Offices, Retail Stores - you name it and we have built it. A straight laced
blue collar family until I came along. Growing up, I worked along side my
father and brothers doing what we did best, our finest work to build places
for people to carry out their lives. Then I found computers and the rest is
a strange tale that lead me down a different path than the one planned for
me.

But while I left the building trade, it did not leave me. To this day I
still compare the work I do in the computer and engineering fields to the
work I have done building a home. Do I have a solid plan? Is the work
progressing correctly? Are there any changes that we need to make due to
some unforeseen issue? Does everything work the way it should?

The process is simple - start with an idea, create a plan and then build.
Modify as needed. Test and check systems often, but not to the point where
all you do is check. Before too long, you have a finished product. It works
for houses, it works for computers and it should work for space companies.
Not too hard of jump right?

Well, that isn't quite how it works. Several things are missing. The biggest
being infrastructure and I am not talking about launch complexes either.
Getting good parts is not only difficult; it is downright impossible some
days. Most of your time is spent running around finding things that will
work that are not priced so high as to be outside your budget (namely for
liability issues). What is a rocket enthusiast supposed to do?

For the time being, there isn't a lot that can be done. But there is an
opportunity for an individual (or individuals) to change this state of
affairs. It is not glamorous but it is needed and could probably reap some
nice profits. Someone needs to create a one-stop shop for parts and services
for the rocket engineer. Someone needs to build the Home Depot of the space
industry.

A builder today has the advantage of a large number of suppliers for his
design choices. If you need a faucet, just hop down to Home Depot. They have
several designs that will fit your needs (and your plans).

Want shingles for the roof? You can get a dozen different sizes and colors
delivered to you. The system works great. The prices are reasonable and you
can get what you need. There are plenty of materials for a builder to choose
from so they don't have to create a sink from scratch.

For the rocket guy or gal, these types of resources are hard to come by. Why
isn't there a 'Space Depot' of sorts? A place where a company could buy
whatever components they needed for their rocket projects, pay reasonable
rates for the materials and get good quality for their money? A space
superstore for the engineer to use?

If you think this idea strange then consider the following: A large quantity
of policy and position papers are written about what space flight should
look like in the future. How we should be working on land use rights for the
moon, flight regimes for tourists, etc.

There are entire conferences on what we should do with the abundance of
space resources. Lots of it seems to be just paper shuffling and rhetoric on
what we should be doing instead of actually working on the issues.

Why?

Because the basic terrestrial resources needed to do the job just don't
exist. I have attended the ISDC and the Space Access conferences and have
seen a lot of wonderful concepts. Most of them revolve around needing
hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars before they can start to
produce results simply because you have to build everything from scratch.
There is no 'Space Depot' to get parts from.

For the record, I want to go to space. I created a company to start the ball
rolling in that direction but I have found, like many others who have
started aerospace firms that the resources needed aren't quite there yet. It
is a sad state of affairs. If you want off the shelf parts, they are
practically non-existent.

For those parts that do exist, the companies that produce them fear selling
them because of liability issues. If someone were to create a 'Space Depot'
then many infrastructure problems would have easier solutions and we can get
to space that much faster.

So, how much for those 2,500 pound engines on isle 3?


Joe Latrell is President and CEO of Beyond-Earth Enterprises, a space launch
company based in Colorado Springs, CO. He is an avid space enthusiast and
participates in a wide range of space related activities from discussion
groups to systems development. He can be contacted via Joe Latrell
Joe_latrell@NOSPAM@beyond-earth.com - replace @NOSPAM@ with single @