Posted on 03/14/2002 8:30:39 AM PST by RightWhale
So far, and for the near future, no other space ventures succeed without strong national interest and government funding.
I seem to be all thumbs with the key board today.
It can be.
At the present level of space development, obviously it is not. Perhaps the commsat sector, or the GPS sector is close to profitable. The science missions are nowhere near self-supporting, it's all government with a little university thrown in.
The sectors of space development that can be profitable are a few industrial sectors and space tourism/Hollywood, none of which are developed at all. Such a sector must reach a certain stage of development before it can begin to break even or get ahead.
For example, Space Adventures is building a mini- Buran in Russia for suborbital tourist flights, ticket $80,000 each. They are years from first launch, and years from profitability.
Space mining is an area I have studied. It can be developed to the point of profitability, and the market already exists. But the investment is large and the time to first paycheck is fairly long.
Space power satellites is something China wants to work on. This could be made to work and pay its own way, maybe more. So far nothing has been done away from the drafting tables.
Space farming is another possibility, but I consider this to be much more difficult in a business sense than space mining; space farming is coming sooner or later, but commercial space farming is a long way off.
A moon settlement can be created, but it won't be commercial. It might be made self-supporting, but not a money-maker.
These are just a few possibilities. Space mining is economically possible now, the rest won't be until later. Tourism/Hollywood can be done anytime someone builds a ship, but profitability is a different question.
The CZ-5-5.0 heavy launcher would use the 5.0 m core stage together with a number of modular 2.25 m or 3.35 m diameter stages as strap-ons. Maximum payload with four 3.35 m diameter strap-ons is given as 23 tonnes to low earth orbit or 11 tonnes to geosynchronous transfer orbit. Lower payloads could be achieved by using 2 x 2.25 m plus 2 x 3.35 m strap-on stages; four x 2.25 m strap-on stages, or two of either stage. Growth to 40 tonnes payload would be possible if eight 3.35 m strap-ons could be used. The CZ-5 core stage is similar in dimensions and mass to the Ariane 5 core, but powered by four engines instead of the single engine used in Ariane.
Great Expectations!!!
Who cares that China has over a billion mouths to feed?
Let 'em squander their resources on the moon.
Been there, done that.
Nothing up there but a gigantic, barren rock.
If the Chinese can figure out how to eat it, let 'em have it.
This is just a wish list of things the US is doing or has already done. The fact is the space program no longer drives research and technology the way it once did. The glass cockpit in the Space Shuttle was derived from commercial airliners fer cryin' out loud, and corrupt senators get joy rides in the name of "medical research." NASA is simply shrinking to its proper size -- reflecting the reality of what we can efficiently get out of it versus what we get out of other research programs for the same amount of money.
And as far as China goes, it would be much better for them if they dropped their totalitarian government and shared in the technological wealth of the free world rather than reinvent the wheel forty years after the fact.
They don't seem to have improved much on the technology passed on by Loral and Clinton!
Note to our Chinese friends:
You have the "Green" light. Go for it!
Absolutely. We all spy and we all use space exploration for military purposes. All the more reason for me to wish the Chinese space program many fortune cookies worth of bad luck.
Now Asia
We each read different things into the image. What do you see?
Beauty in the first image, trouble in the second.
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