Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

Rand, can you offer a succinct description of an alternative architecture you believe could gain the support of Congress and the White House?

Prizes, as you have said before?

I do very much like prizes yet I also believe the total television revenue that could be collected by any non-NASA player who beat NASA back to the moon would exceed what we can expect Congress to appropriate for a prize fund. Therefore, a multi-billion dollar prize fund already exists for anyone who cares to beat NASA back to the moon.

Other than prizes, how would you change the ESAS architetcure? And, how would you get Congress and the White Huose to say okay?

Posted by Bill White at November 3, 2005 11:27 AM

Also, Mike Griffin is the first NASA Administrator to talk openly about settlement (okay, colonization) - - maybe we should spend some time celebrating that and letting it sink into our shared Western culture before we circle up the firing squads.

Posted by Bill White at November 3, 2005 11:50 AM

> I also believe the total television revenue that could be collected by any non-NASA
> player who beat NASA back to the moon would exceed what we can expect Congress to
> appropriate for a prize fund. Therefore, a multi-billion dollar prize fund already exists f

The problem is, your belief is not on actual rates networks pay for television time.

A hit teevee show is worth a few million -- not billions -- of dollars.

This is in the same category as your belief that it's possible to mine platinum from the Moon for hundreds of dollars per ounce while depending on Shuttle-derived expendables and Constellation capsules for transportation.

Simple math shows the things you believe are off by factors of 100 to 1000. Yet, you continue to believe them. Why?

Posted by Edward Wright at November 3, 2005 11:57 AM

> Also, Mike Griffin is the first NASA Administrator to talk openly about settlement (okay, colonization) - -
> maybe we should spend some time celebrating that and letting it sink into our shared Western culture
> before we circle up the firing squads.

Replacing the Shuttle with something even more expensive will not lead to space settlement. This is hardly the first time a NASA Administrator has oversold a program. Why is overselling something to celebrate?

Posted by Edward Wright at November 3, 2005 12:04 PM

It's not that the TV folks will pay much. The sponsors for your project are more likely to pay good money to get their logo on the TV. Show sponsors pay the broadcaster. Your sponsors pay you to present them to as many eyeballs as you can.

Posted by Alfred Differ at November 3, 2005 12:06 PM

TV rights? To watch NASA get shown up by some upstart who intends to mine platinum to stop global warming? And begin the human settlement of the cosmos?

If we cannot sell those TV rights for many billions we should also forget about long term taxpayer support.

People purchased $4.1 billion in cell phone ring tones & wallpaper last year.

= = =

As for lunar platinum, locate intact chunks of metallic nickel-iron asteroids and the carbonyl process combined with nickel vapor deposition will allow extraction of PGMs for modest amounyts of money. I acknowledge there is a big "IF" there. Intact chucks of Ni-Fe asteroids are not proven to exist on the moon. But =IF= metallic Ni-Fe fragments exist, Mond process is easy, requires little power and the CO can be fully recycled.

Nickel vapor deposition also allows fabrication of all sorts of cool stuff as well.

= = =

Transport? RL-10 powered re-useable landers fueled with Terran CH4 or H2 and lunar LOX carry metal to EML-1. Harvest the snowfall under your launches to recover water ice & dry ice. Dump the PGM back to Earth from EML-1. Soft landings are irrelevant.

= = =

Lunar delivery of CH4? Try re-fillable plug-n-play tanks and airbags like MER. Proton is $1000 per pound to LEO, today.

Posted by Bill White at November 3, 2005 12:19 PM

Bill White is absolutely right about the PGM stuff. There is a big if, and that is what I have always said, as the originator of that thesis. A remote sensing mission can answer that question one way or another.

I will be reporting later this month at JUSTAP 2005 about a possible identification of a large impact related deposit on the Moon based upon Apollo and Lunar Prospector data sets and its economic value.

Posted by Dennis Wingo at November 3, 2005 12:29 PM

> It's not that the TV folks will pay much. The sponsors for your project
> are more likely to pay good money to get their logo on the TV.

You might talk to someone who works for NASCAR. They can tell you exactly how much a logo exposure is worth (per second).

Or take IEG's sponsorship course and you'll get their workbook, which includes sample calculations.

If logo rights on a teevee show were worth multibillion dollars, NASCAR would be the biggest corporation on the planet.

Posted by Edward Wright at November 3, 2005 01:25 PM

> TV rights? To watch NASA get shown up by some upstart who intends
> to mine platinum to stop global warming?

Already being done, right here on Earth.

You still ignore the economics. A single Apollo mission cost $2 billion and mined a couple hundred pounds of rocks. Not platinum, not even ore, just rocks, that were sitting out on the surface. For $2 billion, you can build an entire platinum mine on Earth.

You can't set up a full-scale mining operation with one heavy lift vehicle and Constellation capsule. Or ten. Or fifty.

Building the NSF base at the South Pole, which is a lot smaller than a typical mining camp, took more than 350 C-130 flights. Each C-130 can deliver as much cargo as your heavy lifter sends to the Moon.

At the planned launch rate of three missions a year, it would take over 100 years for Constellation to equal the base the US has at the South Pole right now -- and that assumes the astronauts don't consume any of the supplies while the base is being built.

Before you say ISRU will save you, I'll point out that in-situ resources are used at the South Pole right now. All of their water and breathing gases are extracted from the environment, and that doesn't require tons of equipment as lunar ISRU will. Equipment that all has to be shipped up to the Moon.

No matter how many times Dennis says "launch cost are not an issue," launch costs are an issue.

> Transport? RL-10 powered re-useable landers fueled with Terran CH4 or H2
> and lunar LOX carry metal to EML-1.

And where are you going to get the systems and technology for these reusable landers, when you don't want us to do any development of reusable rockets right here on Earth? Are you just going to hope the first model you build works perfectly, like the Space Shuttle?

On the one hand, you and Dennis think it's impossible to build and operate reusable vehicles here on Earth, where there are skilled mechanics and an industrial base to maintain them. On the other hand, you think it will be a cinch to maintain reuseable landers at a field site on the Moon. At one time, Dennis even said all the maintenance could be done by robots. (I'll bet the airlines and military would like to have robots that could do that!)

> Lunar delivery of CH4? Try re-fillable plug-n-play tanks and airbags
> like MER. Proton is $1000 per pound to LEO, today.

And how would those tanks and bags fit into the ESAS architecture? The ESAS transfer stage and lander are launched fully fueled. They don't need any more propellant.

$1000 a pound to LEO (which is rate you can't always get) translates into roughly $10,000 a pound on the lunar surface. That's roughly the cost of sending a pound to ISS today, with the Shuttle.

A few years ago, Dennis thought ISS could be profitable by now, using only the Shuttle for transport. He was wrong. If it costs just as much to resupply ISS 2 on the Moon, it will accomplish little more than ISS 1 in LEO.

You cannot wish launch costs away.

Posted by Edward Wright at November 3, 2005 02:14 PM

The NFL pulls in over 3 Billion $ a year just in TV Contracts. I would think a commercial space operation could pull in at least 1 or 2 Billion $ year world wide for a number of years; while the novelty lasted.

Posted by Chris at November 4, 2005 05:34 AM

The editors of The New Atlantis hit all the main points of the ESAS discussion and (in my opinion) get it right.

Posted by Bill White at November 4, 2005 09:20 AM

Chris,

I disagree. But suppose it were true. Why aren't businesses working hard to get a piece of that $5-10 billion pie?

Edward,

You cannot wish launch costs away.

First, the ISS has been amazingly profitable for the many contractors who worked on this project. And as far as I can tell, that's exactly what it was meant to do.

Second, nobody is launching in volume. Given the huge fixed costs associated with rockets, this means even with current launch technology we should see improvements in launch costs just from increasing the launch rate. A lunar program would at least increase the launch rate though I don't know what the ultimate effect would be.

Posted by Karl Hallowell at November 4, 2005 10:20 AM

Ed likes to fantasize and mischaracterize what people have said. ISS is currently very profitable for Space Adventures. ISS has been profitable for other companies that have flown commercial payloads to ISS. The statement that I made is that ISS can become profitable from an operations perspective if there is capital, private capital put into doing things there rather than relying on NASA and NASA experiments.

Ed is a living contradiction. He uses space tourism and the tourism at ISS as a proof principle for his suborbital aspirations while denying that ISS can be a proof principle for orbital and space commerce.

Curious that is.

With the impending implosion of the ESAS architecture due to budgetary limitations and realitites, ISS has the best potential for our springboard back to the Moon as well as a hub for orbital human and other commerce. This includes going to the Moon for mining.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at November 4, 2005 11:22 AM

Perhaps he doesn't realize how big space is?

Posted by ken anthony at November 4, 2005 12:37 PM

> Ed likes to fantasize and mischaracterize what people have said. ISS
> is currently very profitable for Space Adventures.

Welfare is very profitable for the woman with 20 children. Hurricanes are very profitable for people who repair houses. Do you think that means that welfare and hurricanes are profitable?

For every Space Adventures that makes money on ISS, there are millions of tax-paying companies and individuals that lose money on it. The losses outweigh the profits to the tune of somewhere around $5 billion a year.

You, on the other hand, boasted that SkyCorp would "pay the full operating costs of ISS" and still make money. On that basis, you wanted the world to give up on CATS and embrace your "alternative approach to CATS" (aka Shuttle and ISS).

The world did exactly what you wanted, yet revenues from SkyCorp and every other company doing business on ISS are insufficient to cover the station's operating costs.

That's because the cost of operating Shuttle and ISS is far greater than the value of any goods and services that could be produced with them. No matter how many times you say "launch costs are not an issue," launch costs are an issue.

Similarly, the cost of building expendable Constellation capsules and heavy lift vehicles will be far greater than the value of the platinum you can possibly mine and transport with them.

Now, if you're saying the US government should spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build ISS 2 on the Moon and many billions a year to operate it, so that you can send up some commercial payloads worth a few million, then you and Kurt can say that is "profitable."

To the taxpayers, however, that is a loss.

> ISS has been profitable for other companies that have flown commercial payloads to ISS.

You mean the baseball you flew for MLB? Okay, sure. What's your point?

We should continue operating the Shuttle and ISS as a subsidy for Major League Baseball?

We should spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build a new ISS on the Moon, so you can send a baseball up there?

We should never do anything to reduce the cost of space transportation, so that people can do things that are profitable without subsidies, because you are against it?

> The statement that I made is that ISS can become profitable from
> an operations perspective if there is capital, private capital put into
> doing things there rather than relying on NASA and NASA experiments.

Yes, and simple profit-and-loss calculations would have shown you that's impossible, unless the taxpayers pay virtually all the costs -- just as they paid the costs of building and operating ISS while you only had to provide the baseball. The minimal ISS crew cannot do anything that's worth more than the $5 billion or so needed to support the station with current transportation systems.

Space travel will never amount to anything until it's profitable -- and not "profitable" in the Hallowell-Wingo "tax everyone else so Boeing and MLB can make a profit" sense.

> With the impending implosion of the ESAS architecture due to budgetary
> limitations and realitites, ISS has the best potential for our springboard
> back to the Moon as well as a hub for orbital human and other commerce. This
> includes going to the Moon for mining.

That's nice. And if mining the Moon with Constellation capsules and ELVs costs 10 or 100 times as much as the material you mine is worth, I suppose you and Kurt will tell us that's fine, because contractors are making a ton of profits?

Posted by Edward Wright at November 4, 2005 06:08 PM

> Second, nobody is launching in volume. Given the huge fixed costs associated
> with rockets, this means even with current launch technology we should see
> improvements in launch costs just from increasing the launch rate. A lunar
> program would at least increase the launch rate though I don't
> know what the ultimate effect would be.

No, it will decrease the launch rate, because NASA plans to build new rockets that are larger than the current rockets.

ESAS will require only six launches per year -- three Saturn V-class Shuttle-derived cargo vehicles and three Saturn I-class "Stick" boosters.

Dennis says he's against heavy lift, but if you talk to him, you'll find he also wants to develop new large rockets: EELV-H (which has never flown successfully) and an even larger EELV-H with a new upper stage.

Posted by Edward Wright at November 4, 2005 06:22 PM

Rand I am not going to bring the boring tete a tete that the continual misstatments that Ed repeatedly makes about what I say to this forum.

The point that I make here because it is relevant is that the critical weakness of the ESAS architecture is that it costs $104 billion dollars to get to the first landing and from what I have gathered at numerous venues is that there is no overarching vision, no sense of purpose, beyond "Apollo on Steroids". There are ways to incorporate larger concerns into our collective space efforts and I address this in my book, "Moonrush". Without tying ESAS and VSE to something larger than what is talked about today by NASA we are doomed to failure, just as has been the case over the last 30 years.

The development of space is much larger than just the suborbital tourist market and without the development of orbital, and even lunar commerce, then there is no way that mankind will ever be more than a one rock species. There are ways to do this and I will make the bold statement that I know at least a couple of ways to make it happen. It will not happen with wild claims about how cheap it is to develop a resusable launch vehicle if the government/investors/easterbunny would just give, A, B, or C, the cash to do it.

Every single person that have made these claims, Gary Hudson, Andrew Beal, David Thompson (Orbital was founded on this premise as well), Elon Musk, and even Burt Rutan, all have found or are founding that it cost more, takes more time, and is much a much harder than they thought.

Orbital commerce is a much lower energy of reaction area to develop business and the profits are potentially much higher. Orbital Recovery's first customer is worth more in terms of business than all of the X-Prize cup participant's put together and we have two more customers in the wings.

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at November 4, 2005 07:23 PM

> Without tying ESAS and VSE to something larger than what is talked about today by NASA we are
> doomed to failure, just as has been the case over the last 30 years.

Griffin already claimed that ESAS will lead to space colonization. You can't tie it to anything bigger than that.

Making extravagant claims might be good for this year's funding, but it will come back to bite you in the long run if you have no way of keeping your promises.

> The development of space is much larger than just the suborbital tourist market and without
> the development of orbital, and even lunar commerce, then there is no way that mankind will ever
> be more than a one rock species.

And that will never happen without affordable transportation. It doesn't matter how many books you write saying cost doesn't matter -- cost matters!

The lunar meteorite thesis you "originated" was mentioned in a book by Neil Ruzic over 30 years ago. He also calculated what space transportation costs would have to be to mine such resources.

> Every single person that have made these claims, Gary Hudson, Andrew Beal, David Thompson
> (Orbital was founded on this premise as well), Elon Musk, and even Burt Rutan, all have found or are
> founding that it cost more, takes more time, and is much a much harder than they thought.

All those people put together have not had anything like the $100 billion the taxpayers flushed down the drain on ISS, Dennis.

Why can you see other people's failures but not admit NASA's?

> Orbital commerce is a much lower energy of reaction area to develop business

If that were the case, you would be asking NASA to build a mining base for you.

> Orbital Recovery's first customer is worth more in terms of business than all of the X-Prize cup
> participant's put together and we have two more customers in the wings.

Apples and oranges. Sticking a plunger is not lunar commerce, nor does it prove you can make money selling lunar platinum for $200 an ounce when every piece of hardware launched from Earth to the Moon it costs >$10,000 a pound.

I have asked you repeatedly for simple calculations. How many tons of equipment will it take to mine platinum on an industrial scale, how many workers, and how many robots? How much will it cost to send all of them to the Moon? How much material can they process? What will the profit or loss be?

Until you can answer those questions, it doesn't make sense to ask the American taxpayers to invest billions of dollars in lunar mining.

Posted by Edward Wright at November 4, 2005 10:00 PM

How many tons of equipment will it take to mine platinum on an industrial scale, how many workers, and how many robots?

As a history major (heh!) who has read Dennis Wingo's book cover to cover several times =IF= (and that is "if") intact chunks of Ni-Fe asteroids are lying about on the lunar surface, two astronauts with a giant Kevlar bag and a tank of carbon monoxide and some solar power can digest metallic nickel and extract PGMs.

No nuclear power needed. No lunar ice needed. No 100 person base needed.

Iron carbonyl is more difficult. But nickel carbonyl gas can be deposited by NVD to form heavy duty reaction chambers capable of handling the temperatures and pressures needed to digest metallic iron via Mond Process.

Digesting nickel via Mond Process occurs at remarkably modest temperatures and pressures and a well engineered plastic bag plus carbon monoxide may be all you need.

Where do you get the CO? Capture the exhaust from an untuned methane/LOX surface rover.

Posted by Bill White at November 4, 2005 10:36 PM

Ed Ed Ed

You just can't resist continuing to argue can you? Yes I do know that Neil Ruzic mentioned mining metal meteorites in his book "The Case for the Moon" 40 years ago. I properly reference him.

Ed the problem that you have is that anything that is not your flavor of orange is an apple. You have lost the vision to see beyond your own little sphere of interest. You epitomize the disconnect between the realists and the "zealists" who loudly proclaim that "there can be only one" (wasn't there a movie about this?) way to do space commerce. In doing so you do a complete disservice to the cause that you seek to espouse.

We don't know what the costs will be yet for PGM mining on the Moon. We have not found conclusively the first asset. This is what is called a hypothesis. This is a hypothesis that is testable, which is what we are working on now. It may happen that in the very near future that it is too expensive to extract the metal from the Moon.

However, the KNOWLEDGE of the existence of large Ni/Fe impactors will cause an shift in perception in the same way that Dennis Tito caused a shift in perception for space tourism. Before Tito flew all space tourism discussions were theoretical and mostly poo pooed by everyone.

Now we are up to four tourists that are going to spend a week on this $100 billion dollar space station that you decry. Without this space station there would be no space tourists. Without space tourists the difficulty in raising money for ANY other form of space tourism would be monumentally more difficult.

ISS was never designed to be profitable. It is a research installation and its purpose is to test out new ways of doing things. In this it has been successful already. By the end of next year there will have been a minimum of $50 million dollars in orbital tourist commerce. This commerce helped to energize Robert Bigelow to continue to pour money into his commercial space station. It also provided a story for Burt Rutan, who has orbital dreams himself, to tell to convince Paul Allen to fund Space Ship 1.

This is what connections in history are all about Ed.

What we will do is raise the money for a commercial remote sensing mission to the Moon. IF that mission finds even a fraction of the Ni/Fe resources that we think are there, then it will be the first proof of concept that at least the resource is there. Then the next step is a lander to do a ground truth study of the resource. Only after that information is gathered can a high fidelity design and cost exercise begin the process of figuring out how to get the resource out of the Ni/Fe on the Moon, and then how to transport it back to the Earth.

We have already been working on the transportation from the Earth to Moon and back and we have pretty good confidence that the cost for returning the PGM's from lunar orbit for 60 metric tons is $30 million at today's prices. Just FYI that is $2 billion dollars worth of PGM. The big unknown transportation cost is the cost of the cargo craft to get the 60 tons of payload from the Lunar surface to LLO. Even if that is $100M, which seems reasonable, then it is a win. As for the production costs on the surface--who knows. We won't until we know where it is, the quality of the resource (PGM concentrations vary from about 7 gram per ton to over 50 grams per ton), and whether or not it is in large chunks or there in fines.

With Orbital Recovery we are already working the basics for transporting the materials back, including the orbital operations involved.

Things evolve, as will our plans. Oh by the way, I have never said one word about having the American taxpayers invest billions of dollars in lunar mining.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at November 4, 2005 10:39 PM

PS - One VSE LSAM cargo version will allegedly deliver 21 MT of cargo. Make that 20 MT of H2 and combust with lunar LOX and that equals 180 MT of water.

180 MT of water will suffice a preliminary mining camp for a long, long time.

20 MT of CH4? Burn it in your rovers and you do the math on the resulting H2O, C02 and CO.

Posted by Bill White at November 4, 2005 10:40 PM

Dennis is giving a professional answer. Me? I am just an amateur enthusiast.

But I think I am right, nonetheless. :-)

Posted by Bill White at November 4, 2005 10:47 PM

Ed, you said in response to my comments on TV contract revenue for a commercial operation that reaches the moon.

> Why aren't businesses working hard to get a piece of that $5-10 billion pie?

Are you sure they aren't?

Based on my experience in the corporate world, the announcing, publicizing and marketing of upcoming products does not commence as soon as a product begins development, or even through a large portion of the development stage.

So, to say business aren't working on multi-billion $ deals is pure speculation. The existence that deals aren't happening is a fact no one would know; since they are usually kept secret for much of the time before the product is released.

The bottom line major international commercial events (sporting events, major movies, etc.) can rack in billions of $, through ticket sales, sponsorship and merchandising. With proper product development, marketing, etc.; commercial human space activities can do the same.

Posted by Chris at November 5, 2005 11:22 AM

> Yes I do know that Neil Ruzic mentioned mining metal meteorites in his book "The Case for the Moon"
> 40 years ago. I properly reference him.

I was referring to a different book. "Where the Winds Sleep." In any case, he was writing about asteroid material on the Moon when you were about 10 years old, so I doubt you originated the idea. I also know for a fact that you did not originate the idea of orbital assembly, as you have claimed elsewhere. And I doubt that you and Al Gore invented the Internet. :-)

> You have lost the vision to see beyond your own little sphere of interest.

My "sphere" of interest is the entire universe, Dennis. I simply believe we must explore it in a practical, sustainable, cost-effective manner. You're much too hung up on the belief that Von Braun had all the answers.

> We don't know what the costs will be yet for PGM mining on the Moon. We have not found conclusively the first asset.

That doesn't prevent you from making assumptions and estimating what it would cost to mine those assets given those assumptions. Other people have done that. The Commercial Space Transportation Study, for example, looked at lunar mining and what transportation costs would have to be to make it work. So have many other studies.

All those studies clearly show that we need marked reductions in the cost of space transportation to make things like lunar mining viable. If you haven't done any cost studies, how do you know that everyone who has done them is wrong?

> This is a hypothesis that is testable, which is what we are working on now.

That could be done with a couple of probe missions. It does not require a $100 billion Apollo program.

I don't object to NASA trying to test Ruzic's hypothesis. I do object to your telling people that if platinum group metals are there, you can mine them on an industrial scale while it costs tens of thousands of dollars to send one piece of hardware to the Moon -- because you can't.

If we start working on reducing the cost of space transportation now, then by the time we discover platinum on the Moon, we might have the systems that allow us to exploit those deposits. If we put it off for another 40 years, it will be another 40 years before we can do anything on the Moon except for flag and footprint missions.

Your opposition to CATS will only defeat the goals you want to accomplish.

> Now we are up to four tourists that are going to spend a week on this $100 billion dollar space station
> that you decry. Without this space station there would be no space tourists. Without space tourists
> the difficulty in raising money for ANY other form of space tourism would be monumentally more
> difficult.

Yes, and ISS deserves credit for that. It does not deserve $100 billion worth of credit. You need to look at cost-benefit analyses, Dennis. If you wanted to make it possible for four tourists to go into space, you could have done it without building a $100 billion space station.

> ISS was never designed to be profitable.

You're changing the subject. ISS was not designed to be profitable, but you thought it could be profitable, with current space transportation costs. You said one company could earn enough money on ISS to pay for all its operating costs, including the Shuttle. You made a mistake. You should learn from that mistake, Dennis. Transportation costs do matter.

> We have already been working on the transportation from the Earth to Moon and back and we have pretty
> good confidence that the cost for returning the PGM's from lunar orbit for 60 metric tons is $30 million
> at today's prices.

At today's prices, $30 million will get you maybe a ton of equipment in lunar orbit. How do you propose to return 60 tons of platinum from lunar orbit with a one-ton reentry capsule -- especially when that ton has to include propellant?

> The big unknown transportation cost is the cost of the cargo craft to get the 60 tons of payload
> from the Lunar surface to LLO. Even if that is $100M, which seems reasonable, then it is a win.

Again, at today's prices, $100 million will get you just a few tons to lunar orbit. That's smaller than the Apollo LM -- and it doesn't even include the cost of building the lander. Then there's the cost of transporting propellant for the lander from Earth -- or, alternatively, all the equipment needed to produce proppelant on the Moon and the crew needed to maintain that equipment. All that stuff adds up.

> As for the production costs on the surface--who knows.

Look through some of the old Space Manufacturing books from SSI, and you will find some estimates. You don't need more than a ballpark estimate to see that the amount of equipment will be more than NASA can afford to spend with its current budget or any budget it is likely to have in the next 50 years.

That's not to say it can't be done, simply that we need lower launch costs. Fortunately, there is no law of physics that prevents us from lowering launch costs.

> h by the way, I have never said one word about having the American taxpayers invest billions of dollars in lunar mining.

Then you'd better talk to Bill White. His article on Space Review quotes you as wanting the government to subsidize all the startup costs.

Posted by at November 5, 2005 01:46 PM

This is my final response to you and only because you lie and continue to lie about what I have said, done, or written about.

I have all of Ruzic's books as well as his wife's permission to use pictures from his books. What I have done is to put forth the hypothesis about surviving Ni/Fe impactors in a quantifiable way. If you ask Dr. Harrison Schmidt, Larry Taylor, and even John Lewis, you will see that they think that the amout of these resources are minimal. I happen to think differently, and am building the evidence to bring data to the discussion rather than speculation. At no point in either of Ruzic's books does he go into detail about PGM's because they were not anywhere near as important to the economy in 1965 as they are in 2005.

I have never ONCE claimed that I originated the idea of orbital assembly. I go into great detail about this in my book where I go discuss the original ideas dating from Von Braun/Bonestal/Ley/Ordway's work as far back as 1952. You just have to lie because you bring nothing else to the discussion.

You continue to mischaracterize what I say about cheap access to space as well. I have never ONCE came out in opposition to CATS. What I have stated repeatedly is that CATS is not the absolute holy grail in helping to bring forth space commerce. There are a lot of profitable activities that can be undertaken without having CATS and furthermore it is these activities that will help to enable the markets that actually make CATS a viable investment for investors that today are not investing large sums of Sand Hill Road type investment into space.

No Ed, the SSI books are not the be all and end all in determining the cost of mining on the Moon. Lunar mining of PGM's has a completely different cost and set of technical requirements than equivalent work on an asteroid. I have every one of the SSI Space Manufacturing books and in NONE of them do you find the costs for processing millions of tons of Ni/Fe impactor on the lunar surface.

Lower launch costs are only PART of a larger, more complex equation relating to the economic development of the inner solar system. You can't even take the numbers that I posted previously in this thread to put them into the proper context of an overall systems architecture. You simply don't understand what you are talking about. You say the words but you don't know what they mean.

I don't care what anyone has written about what I have said, I happen to know what I have said.

As for ISS, who can place a value on perception? I have been going to conferences on space tourism for almost two decades and the giggle factor was pretty much infinite until Jeff Manber and MirCorp signed up Dennis Tito and then he flew. The Japanese person that flew in the early 90's was considered a fluke and a stunt. Tito putting up his hard earned cash for a joyride changed everything. Then Shuttlworth and now Olsen. For you to minimize the importance of this as a breakthrough is absolutely mind boggling and it would NOT have happened without the existence of ISS no matter what it cost.

Without the work that JSC did on Transhab it is likely that Bigelow would not be where he is today in his efforts and that was paid for out of ISS funds as well.

You simply lack the understanding Ed of how technological and financial progress is made in a new industry. Just one more example is that since Orbital Recovery has made the progress that we have made many others have started to get the bug to do the same thing. It is called being a first mover. Tito enabled a market, we are the first mover in another new market and I even have a lot more evidence now than five years ago about the value of orbital assembly.

Bringing a whole entire new realm of commerce into being is a difficult process and involves a lot of work in many areas. Your contention that all we need is CATS is a very simplistic viewpoint that does not stand up to scruitiny. By your definition we have CATS today. A person flying to ISS for $14M dollars and spending a week there IS CATS. A Proton used to fly hardware up to ISS for $12M dollars IS CATS.

You will never figure this out. However, there are others out there who read this and who will.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at November 5, 2005 04:58 PM

Chris, that was me, not Ed.

Ed, you said in response to my comments on TV contract revenue for a commercial operation that reaches the moon.

> Why aren't businesses working hard to get a piece of that $5-10 billion pie?

Are you sure they aren't?

The reasons I still wonder about that is that first, I consider the amount of metal bending and activity to be rather low given the supposed jackpot at the end of the rainbow. OTOH, I considered it low before really considering this revenue source, so maybe it's just a result of the risk-adverse business culture that has built up in the developed world rather than any genuine reflection of the profitability of space tourism and related commerce.

Second, you compare space flight generically to one of the most successful franchises out there. There is very limited competition for NFL. The barriers to entry for space launch firms is substantially lower IMHO so I think there's cause to question whether even a front runner (unless they end up with a few years head start on the competition) can pull together that sort of ad revenue.

Posted by Karl Hallowell at November 6, 2005 04:20 AM

Ugh, I didn't preview before I posted and it showed. Here is the corrected message.

---

Chris, that was me, not Ed.

Ed, you said in response to my comments on TV contract revenue for a commercial operation that reaches the moon.

> Why aren't businesses working hard to get a piece of that $5-10 billion pie?

Are you sure they aren't?

Posted by Karl Hallowell at November 6, 2005 04:30 AM

Karl, the big media pay-days would come from doing something first, like beating NASA back to the Moon.

Of course, the first private lunar landing would need to be hyped by folks like David Stern (NBA) and Brad Falk (Michael Jordan's agent) to maximize the media revenue.

Posted by Bill White at November 6, 2005 05:07 PM

> I have never ONCE came out in opposition to CATS.

By your definition -- "flying to ISS for $14 million is CATS" -- no, you haven't.

But flying to ISS for $14 million is not CATS.

CATS is *cheap* access to space. NASA might think $14 million is cheap, but to most people, $14 million is a hell of a lot of money.

CATS means developing new, reusable vehicles so people can go into space for *thousands* of dollars, not millions of dollars -- and that you have been opposed to.

Or have you forgotten how you harangued the Space Frontier Foundation to shut down the CATS project and embrace your "alternative approach"?

As for my "lying," I invite readers to read Bill White's quote from your book, or better yet, buy the book for themselves, and judge whether you were not asking for subsidies, as you now say.

> What I have stated repeatedly is that CATS is not the absolute holy grail in helping to bring forth
> space commerce. There are a lot of profitable activities that can be undertaken without having CATS

So you claim. Yet, neither you nor anyone else can show calculations to demonstrate that.

Perhaps there's a reason for that, Dennis? "If you can't say it in mathematics, it isn't science, it's opinon."

> the SSI books are not the be all and end all in determining the cost of mining on the Moon.

I never said they were -- but they are a beginning.

Show me some better numbers, if you have them. I've asked you for them, time and time again. Yet, you haven't shown me anything. Just insults, because I won't believe claims you make without any evidence.

> By your definition we have CATS today. A person flying to ISS for $14M dollars and spending a
> week there IS CATS. A Proton used to fly hardware up to ISS for $12M dollars IS CATS.

Not my definition.

You insist on believing that the world shares your goals and definitions.

A few months ago, you said that if your approach were successful, as many as 3000 people a year might be flying in space by 2045.

That means that 85 years after the beginning of the space age, there would still be fewer people flying in space than there were flying on airplanes in 1913 -- just ten years after the invention of the airplane.

That might be the result of your "alternative approach to CATS," but it isn't CATS and it isn't the kind of "industry" I want to see. I have no desire to see to see a world where spaceflight remains a rare, expensive activity available to a trivial number of people for the next 40 years.

Posted by Edward Wright at November 6, 2005 09:06 PM

Laf

Or have you forgotten how you harangued the Space Frontier Foundation to shut down the CATS project and embrace your "alternative approach"?

**************

Your own words refute you.

Never happened.

__________

So you claim. Yet, neither you nor anyone else can show calculations to demonstrate that.

**********

laf

That 50 billion dollar a year commercial space industry, guess that does not count. Oh and there is that little factoid about us starting a completely new market segement for commercial on orbit servicing.

__________

As for the rest, you live on planet Ed, where only your views make any sense. As Sponge Bob Squarepants would say to Plankton "Good Luck With That"

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at November 7, 2005 05:45 AM

> That 50 billion dollar a year commercial space industry, guess that does not count.

As I've said before, if all you want to see are a few radio satellites in GEO, then ELVs are cheap enough. That's the old "unmanned space" argument.

For those of us who want to see humans in space, in non-trivial numbers, $14 million for a seat in a Soyuz capsule is not good enough. We want to change the status quo.

$50 billion is chicken feed compared to the trillion-dollar tourism industry, which you ridicule.

> Oh and there is that little factoid about us starting a completely new market
> segement for commercial on orbit servicing.

SkyCorp/ESA did not start commercial on-orbit servicing. NASA serviced a Hughes communication satellite from the Shuttle in the 1980's.

I wish you luck in your endeavor, but claiming you invented the Internet does not enhance your case. :-)

> As for the rest, you live on planet Ed, where only your views make any sense.

No, only views that can be supported with valid financial calculations make any sense.

As G. Harry Stine said long ago, rocket scientists need to stop worrying about Isp and start learning about ROI.

Posted by Edward Wright at November 7, 2005 01:37 PM

Ed you are so funny!!!

First you pillory tourists to ISS as not being commercial and then you tout NASA's use of the Shuttle to rescue a GEO comsat as a commercial business!!

You are just precious!!

Posted by Dennis Wingo at November 7, 2005 03:53 PM

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