Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

EML-1 is essential for opening up the moon to a robust commercial presence. Even absent recoverable lunar water, lunar LOX and Terran methane/H2 would allow a re-useable shuttle to travel between EML-1 and the lunar surface at a greatly reduced cost.

Take that proposed NASA LSAM, swap in RL-10s for both ascent and descent purposes and permanetly affix the landing legs (no hardware gets left behind, ever) and voila! - - a reuseable LSAM. And throwing away an LSAM after each use is far more wasteful than littering the Atlantic floor with hardware.

Today, Soyuz and Proton can deliver three astronuats to EML-1 for less than $100 million and if they then change trains to the re-useable lander the cost of lunar access falls through the floor. No fancy Earth-to-LEO space planes needed (however desirable they may be) and such a lunar shuttle would create tremendous new demand for building space planes.

= = =

NASA recently did a trade study and by-passed EML-1 as an initial step for America's return to the Moon.

Good.

A NASA station at EML-1 could too easily become a new ISS. A commercial EML-1 station however could be lean and mean and make real money helping people access the lunar surface

Posted by Bill White at January 6, 2006 07:59 AM

So $100,000 trips to orbit means maybe million dollar trips to the surface of the Moon.

This may be too pessimistic, IMHO.

One source I found asserts delta v from Earth to LEO is about 9.4 km/s. LEO to EML-1 is about 3.7 km/s and EML-1 to lunar surface another 2.8. Back to EML-1 is 2.6 km/s and EML-1 to Earth (with aerobaking) is less than 1.0 km/s. Propulsive LEO capture is said to be 3.7 km/s.

Anyway, the fuel needed for LEO to luna and bakc to Earth is about the same as Earth to LEO. Halfway, just like Heinlein said.

So why the 10X figure? $100K to LEO and $1M to the Moon? Especially if lunar LOX is 80% to 90% of your fuel mass?

Posted by Bill White at January 6, 2006 08:14 AM

You have to carry your fuel with you before L-1 gets Lunar LOx so same fuel back means 4x fuel forward or about 5x altogether. With lower hardware and staff utilization vs. orbit, add in another 2x. I.e., Lunar LOx is not especially taken into account in implicit calculation.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at January 6, 2006 08:28 AM

Fair enough.

You main point stands, and I agree with it. Lunar tourism is far closer than 100 years if we are willing to think outside the box.

Posted by Bill White at January 6, 2006 08:30 AM

With a base at EML-1, building a ribbon based elevator to the lunar surface is easily done with existing materials. If the frequency of passengers is high enough this would be less expensive than a lander and therefore lower the price even more.

Posted by Frank at January 6, 2006 01:47 PM

In 100 years no one will care about going to the Moon. We'll all be sitting on our sofas immersed in the virual reality being carried by the wires protruding from our heads. I suggest we get that new hyperdrive built or our dreams of space colonization will come to a screaming halt as we all
entertain ourselves to death in virtual worlds.

Posted by X at January 6, 2006 04:27 PM

I think that space tourism is an implausible market.

Let me question the idea that space tourism is a plausible economic engine for development. At the moment three people have paid to fly in space with Space Adventures as the travel agent. Perhaps the market for such people is a bit larger than that, but I will assume that it's no more than ten people.

The reported ticket price is 20M. I'm going to assume that someone in the target market for this service would part with no more than 20% of his or her net worth on average in order to fly. Some people might go a little higher, but the wealthy don't get that way by spending all their money on vacations. This is consistent, by the way, with Tito's and Shuttleworth's net worth - about 200M each. Tito, in particular, from what I've read, advises pension funds for a living, and must necessarily be a very financially prudent person.

There are around 5,000 people who have net worths over 100M. And with an assumed market of ten people at that level of wealth who will actually sign up to fly, that's a prevalence of 0.2 percent.

If you assume further that the price can somehow be reduced, by clever engineering, better management, or new technology, to 200,000 per ticket, you might get more takers. This would put the number of potential riders at 0.2 percent of a much larger base. Using the same net worth proportion as earlier, there are about 500,000 Americans with net worths above 1M. There are thus approximately 1,000 people actually willing to spend 200,000 dollars on a trip to space.

The market being addressed is thus about 200M worth of revenue. I'm unable to see how the investment necessary to reduce the cost of a flight to space a hundredfold can be done for such a small figure.

I see in researching this that there are market surveys indicating somewhat higher numbers. I'm skeptical. It's easy to tell a pollster, "Sure, sounds like fun" but harder to write the check.

Still, that's for a ride like the one Space Adventures arranged on a well-tested and flight-proven system - a Russian Soyuz rocket. A ride on a new machine might be palpably riskier, at least at first.

Next, I note that the 200K per flight figure is common in the space tourism community.. but they're not talking about orbiting the earth, just very brief up-and-down flights offering possibly four minutes of approximate weightlessness. This is a palpably less desirable experience, and I think the demand for it would be correspondingly less. Assuming it's a tenth as desirable, the market being addressed is probably around 20M, which doesn't cover the costs even for the Spaceship One effort you linked to, never mind the other rivals in the marketplace.

Feel free to assume different numbers if you like for any of these proportions. I might be mistaken by twenty percent or so, but I don't think it's obvious that I'm pessimistic.

If space tourism happens, I think it will be because some very wealthy person with a personal passion for the subject invests in it for his own reasons. But it's not a business at the moment, it's a belief.

Posted by Jane Bernstein at January 6, 2006 08:56 PM

Well, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Rocketplane's investors, and others don't agree with you, Jane. Most of your assumptions are off by orders of magnitude, IMO. Even for the initial suborbital market, there's a lot of demonstrated demand at the 200K price, if Virgin Galactic's initial signups are to be believed. And there's no technical reason that we can't get the orbital price down in tha range.

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 7, 2006 10:21 AM

Branson sees something, IMHO, that is not often discussed. Sub-orbital can create substantial revenue unrelated to ticket sales to passengers.

SS1 never flew a paying passenger yet Volvo and 7-Up bought advertising. Branson wants ticket prices high to maintain the exclusivity and glamour of it all and he will make money by selling more Virgin Atlantic airline tickets goosed by Virgin Galactic publicity.

After all, George Lucas made more money selling Star Wars merchandise (like the Darth Vader helmet my nephew got for Christmas and the Star Wars wrapping paper my brother wrapped the gift with) than he did on ticket sales. Take an expansive view of space tourism (brand value and marketing perhaps will generate more revenue than paying passengers) and its a far more viable industry.

Posted by Bill White at January 7, 2006 11:41 AM

"There are thus approximately 1,000 people actually willing to spend 200,000 dollars on a trip to space."

You are ignoring the effect of an elastic demand curve. When the early adpoters begin to push down the price, it becomes within the grasp of ordinary americans. When it hits $10,000, I will take my subortibal trip. I suspect I will make it prior to 2020.

Posted by Mike Puckett at January 7, 2006 12:18 PM

Rand, I think your response to my comment above proves my point exactly. Branson, Bezos, Allen, Carmack, and perhaps Musk all fall into the category of wealthy people with a personal passion for the subject and the means to invest in it themselves.

Don't get me wrong - it'd be wonderful if it happens. I'd be thrilled. And I have wanted to travel in space ever since I was a little girl and might someday. I'd hold out for a real flight to space (i.e. an actual orbit, maybe a visit to a space station).

But this is not an investment grade opportunity yet. Sometimes people with passion and enthusiasm for something new bet heavily on a new technology or market opportunity, despite the so-called "smart money" giving it a pass. I have a couple of investments like that myself, in the medical area, and perhaps I'll get lucky with them. But I recognize that the odds are against me and I may wind up losing all of what I put in.

Bill points out that perhaps the market isn't actually ticket revenue but advertising other stuff. Could be. What do the business plans of the companies involved say? What proportion of revenue is derived from ticket sales? Are there other revenue streams?

I did find a market survey on the web from a company called "Futron." I found the survey methodology interesting but the conclusions unpersuasive. If seven percent of the people able to afford a 20M ride to orbit were truly willing to do so, and if there are five thousand such people, then 350 of them would have, by now, stepped up to at least put their names on a waiting list. So far, three have. That's a pretty big discrepancy, and I thought I was being generous by more than tripling the market in my calculation above. I am forced to conclude, in the absence of evidence to the contrary (and please point me to it if it's out there someplace), that expressed willingness to pay for such trips, and actual willingness to do so, are at some remove from each other.

So I think my basic point stands. If the price is 200K, and the population of people with net worth at least five fold that number is representative of the market being addressed, then the rate of market capture will have to be much much higher than that already demonstrated for a much more desirable, arguably less risky product.

Now excuse me, I have to go watch Galactica on my TiVo. :-)

Posted by Jane Bernstein at January 7, 2006 12:48 PM

Not too many people bought jet flights before they were test flown. The fact that there are presales and excitement at all is pretty good. Branson, French, Bezos and others (including me) will be testing the demand the hard way.

I agree that this is not an investment grade opportunity. It is not a VC grade opportunity. It is at the garage startup/rich eccentric stage. We haven't yet had our "Netscape moment" as Elon Musk puts it. But was is the missing secret sauce? A little bit of demonstrated demand and successful testing and operations. Prices to buy in will be higher if you wait for the investment grade proposition. Apple, Microsoft and Dell are blue chips now.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at January 7, 2006 03:36 PM

With 7 million millionaire families and a 0.02% prevalence, you get 1400 folks. That sells out Rocketplane and Virgin for their first few years until 2010. By then we may get new capacity on line from XCOR, Masten, SpaceDev and others. Price will fall until demand meets supply or it hits the marginal cost of the lowest cost provider. For true reusables, there are quotes on the net (including my interviews at The Space Review) about making money at prices less than $50,000. You may hit your price number within 10-20 years.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at January 7, 2006 03:47 PM

"Elevator"

Build an elevator for supplies that is much lower capacity than what's needed for a piloted passenger transfer. Since it can be in continuous operation, it would have very high utilization with an L-1 depot. It would also give an option to build and deploy bigger and better elevators once passenger traffic would have a high enough utilization to pay for the capital.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at January 7, 2006 04:03 PM

Sam, you're absolutely right to point out that people didn't purchase jet flights before they were tested, but the existence of a well tested product, the Russian Soyuz, offered at a price that doesn't attract more than a tiny fraction of the market of people who can afford it, suggests that even after testing suborbital flight will remain a tough sell.

I think that arguing a suborbital flight is tenfold less desirable than a week in space is being extremely generous, by the way. I suspect the actual desirability is much less than that. It doesn't last as long and isn't nearly as cool.

As for seven million millionaire families, well, I'm pretty sure that number is substantially inflated. The actual number of millionaire families is more like two million (source: Merrill Lynch / Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, World Wealth Report 2001). Using a prevalence of 0.02% on that figure gives you 400 people, and that in turn gives you a total market of 80M gross, minus the per flight costs, about which I have no idea. What does rocket propellant actually cost? And how many people does it take to operate this sort of airplane?

[By the way, and check this yourself because I'm not confident it's that accurate, it appears that there are, very roughly, 20 times as many people in each order of magnitude of net worth as the one above it, at least at the upper end of the range. Thus, there are about 15 people worth over 10B, 260 worth over 1B, about 5000 worth over 100M, 100,000 over 10M, and about 2 million households over 1M. This comes from a quick peek at the Forbes 400 list and a conversation with my accountant, who came over to get all my tax stuff for last year an hour ago.]

Ultimately, I think that space tourism is probably NOT the killer app, to use "dot-com" terms. I have no idea what is, mind you. But not this, I think.

The only number I could find for how much it costs to create one of these spaceships is the reported Spaceship One figure of 30M. Subsequent generations are probably going to cost more - I think that's a fair assertion. So with two or three companies competing for a smallish market, investing sums comparable to the plausible market gross, and getting into a potential price war with one another with a possibly beneficial effect on demand, but a certainly adverse effect on profitability in the short term, when does that get profitable?

Posted by Jane Bernstein at January 7, 2006 05:30 PM

They've redone the survey and people have gotten richer. http://en.wiki pedia.org/wiki/Millionaire (7.7 million in 2003 released in 2004).

I don't think you're being fair about the orbital model. You have to go to Russia. You have to train for months and learn Russian. That raises the implicit price and makes it 50% less attractive than a US option from what I recollect of Futron.

And by the way, there is a fourth customer from Japan for orbital. Plus the US government just bought a bunch of seats (which is also a customer for suborbital folks).

I am predicting:
1. High demand
2. High price
3. Many competitors
4. Wildly interesting differentiation
a. 0, 1, 2 pilots
b. spacesuits/no spacesuits
c. long and short hang time
d. 1-8 fellow passengers
e. seatbelt/no seatbelt in no gravity
5. High profit

You are predicting:
1. Low demand
2. High prices
(I pointed out prices would drop to equilibrate)
3. Few competitors once market demand is revealed
4. Little differentiation and everyone's offering sucks.
5. No profit

We'll agree to disagree about 1. Low prices will imply higher quantity demand. This may not entail high enough profits to pay off original investors, but it will be enough profits to maintain and operate the existing hardware. So prices will drop and we may or may not see a big enough market to support more hardware development. Concorde had no successor. Supersonic business jets might or might not. Iridium got very popular with all the hurricanes and wars and they can afford to replace satellites now.

On 4, I think you are being horribly unimaginative. Half of the country say they want to go to space some time in their lifetimes. These are people who want to be Alan Shepard. They want to see God's Creation from 100 km up. They want to be one of the first 1000 people in all of the world to have been in space.

And as Bill White points out, it is very cool to be a firm associated with such a project. How much would it cost for Virgin to get the reach and coolness projected by the favorable 60 minutes coverage of their joint venture with Scaled?

Like major league sports, this is cool for the owners. If they are willing to pay millions a year in subsidies for their private space programs, when does the investment really turn into a hobby and the money flowing in count as revenue. As an analog, major leagues sports team typically lose money, but trade at positive prices. That is, it can be efficient for an operation to be unprofitable, yet still stay in business and thrive and grow.

There is coolness for the states that play host to the spaceports. They are willing to pay hundreds of millions for the privilege. There are major spectator opportunities for a regular rocket launch. X-prize in Mojave had thousands of viewers for each of the three launches. Media rights ought to be worth something. Rocketry is dramatic. There will be more shows like the Discovery special by Vulcan Video. Scaled made money with its prize, video rights and licensing to Virgin.

To answer your question, it gets profitable when people see each other in outer space, potential customers see that it is not as unsafe as they thought at first, potential customers get richer, and ops efficiencies allow operators to sell at a price point that starts to generate enough gross profits to building another spaceship when the first one depreciates.

Or it starts profitable and stays profitable.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at January 7, 2006 07:01 PM

Can we please stop talking about "the one and only" killer app?

There is no one killer app and when folks tell me its either/or I usually do my darndest to find a way to answer "both" or "all of the above"

= = =

How do sports stadiums get built? They cobble together a wide variety of revenue streams:

ticket sales
TV, radio and internet
parking
beer, food and soda
merchandise
name rights (Fed Ex Stadium, Staples Center)
advertising
personal seat licenses

On this last point a PSL requires you to pay thousands of dollars to purchase the right to buy tickets to NFL games. Whoa!

Tax incentives from local government

= = =

NO ONE will build a stadium just to get the beer concession. But without beer and parking receipts the business case often fails to close.

Space tourism is not a panacea killer app for humanity to become spacefaring. But cobbled together with other stuff maybe it is a piece of the puzzle.

= = =

NO ONE will go to the moon only to mine platinum or deliver tourists. So why not link them together? From the beginning?

And if suborbital tourism is marketed as a steppingstone to orbital and genuine colonization thereafter, the operators will sell more tee shirts and TV rights to people who might never buy a ticket to fly themselves.

Posted by Bill White at January 7, 2006 07:43 PM

"NO ONE will go to the moon only to mine platinum or deliver tourists. So why not link them together? From the beginning?"

You can't link mining to tourism unless you have one or more of the following:

1) An exclusive concession for mining
2) An unassailable lead due to tourism that will give a strong advantage in Lunar extraction
3) A near-term exploitation strategy for mining that is cash positive

I will grant you that media rights, amusement park co-location, fair admissions and parking, sponsorship, state and local government participation, concessions and retail merchandising opportunities are positive revenue sources and even if they may not be required now to make space tourism profitable, they will certainly be required once there are smoothly running integrated operations that have to compete with others. That is, if an amusement park allows you to cut your suborbital ticket prices in half, then enough entry from amusement parks will make it difficult for operators without amusement parks to compete in suborbital without a 50% cost advantage.

I think scarcity will allow solo operations to succeed for the first two operators and more if there is more than enough demand to fill the first three kinds of vehicles.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at January 8, 2006 06:43 AM

Sam, we can quibble details but we agree on the underlying substance.

Business models will need to scrap up dimes from every imaginable source if we want income statements in the black (skies). And playing to the egos of some rich tycoons can be part of that equation.

Posted by Bill White at January 8, 2006 07:53 AM

Sam,

I don't think we're all that far apart on the numbers. I took a look at the wiki-pedia entry, and the North American high net worth individual figures are 2.5M. Spot me a few Canadians and Mexicans and I'm not way wrong with the figure I quoted.

It's perfectly fair to point out that the market is global though. Naturally, I should point out that the sword cuts both ways - the market for orbital flights is likewise global (Mr. Shuttleworth demonstrates that clearly enough), which would run my prevalence number down even further. Comparing American apples to American apples would yield consistent results.

As to the incovenience of travelling to Russia for an extended period and learning some Russian, I see that the Futron study controlled for that factor, and that the hassle you point out reduces the interest by 44%. I think the numbers for prevalance are off by as much as two orders of magnitude but perhaps this proportion is accurate. It explains about a factor of two difference between the study and the facts on the ground, but not a factor of 100.

[Thanks for the wiki-pedia reference by the way. I like wiki-pedia - it's becoming my new Google. However, as a warning to those who are reading this, be extremely skeptical of anything medical on there. There's a substantial amount of incorrect and incomplete information there. Always consult your physician.]

So let me take your list of points in turn.
1: We do agree to disagree on the demand figures. I might be persuaded if you could tell me how many people have actually put up (possibly non-refundable) deposits. It might be profitable actually to buy up a couple of deposits in advance so that if the product materializes and sees high demand you could sell your place in line at a profit. Hey, options trading on Space Tourism seats!
2: We agree that the price will initially be around 200K. No disagreement there.
3. We might disagree about the number of competitors, but perhaps our definitions of "few" and "many" differ. I'll put a number on it: At most three, entering service within the next eight years.
4. It's unfair of you to characterize my position as "everyone's offering sucks." And I don't think I made any particular point about differentiation. But the product differentiation you identify to me sounds more like "Aisle or Window" level stuff, rather than "Paris or London?" Everyone's product will offer a period of acceleration, a period of weightlessness in the single digit minutes, and a great view.
5. Profit? I'd need to know more about the costs of flying each time, but even taking an optimistic view of demand I can't make the numbers add up.

And this presents a problem. I think you perceive me as being a bit negative about all of this, and my head tells me to be skeptical for the reasons I've outlined. But I am the target market for this sort of thing. I've been a space nut since I was a little girl, wanted to be an astronaut, constructed a medical career around that very goal, became disillusioned with NASA specifically but retain an undiminished enthusiasm for space travel generally, and could afford to go. And I'm not sold.

I would love for events to prove me wrong. Truly I would. But the reasoning is not yet persuading me.

Bill White points out that multiple revenue streams are probably key to making a robust business. I totally agree with that. I was surprised to learn how much our practice made from non-surgical stuff, and how much that buffered the ups and downs of demand for our services. So, if anyone has seen the business plan for one of these organizations, and wants to share (if that's allowed by the non disclosure they usually make you sign), what proportion of total revenue is assumed for seat sales?

Posted by Jane Bernstein at January 8, 2006 10:38 AM

Jane,

Good point pointing out that Russia has world demand too. I do not take those data points as dispositive. There may be hundreds of people willing to go once Soyuz has 500 flights down to show that probability of failure is less than 0.1%, but will never see that level of safety in orbital until there is routine service. Suborbital has enough to get over that hump. Plus with a 0.02% prevalence with so few draws, there must be a huge variance. Again not enough statistics to tell. Demand could be less than 100 or greater than 10,000 quite easily.

It has been reported that Virgin has 50-40,000 depositers. (I would like to see the list and do random audits.) As you point out, it is indeed refundable. It would be nice to see them offer a discount for non-refundable tickets and get the stats. (Only refund if they don't perform.)

My last trump card is that the Futron study left out demand from game prize sales. Anecdotally, this is nearly 50% of trips down to see the Titanic; I haven't confirmed the numbers. SpaceShot (http://www.space-shot.com) is offering one as is Virgin Skill. I will share this much of my business plan for SpaceShot, Inc.: there is 0% revenue from full price sales.

I apologize for overreacting to your disappointment with the offerings. But people bought CP/M machines and Apple I's. Enough to prove there was a strong market for IBM PCs and Apple IIs. (They also bought enough Iridium pre-sales to find out the hard way that there was no market for satellite phones--yet.) It is cheaper to deploy SpaceShot than to do a comprehensive market study. So that's where my money is.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at January 8, 2006 03:57 PM

Just a cost nit. Since coat to orbit and cost to moon are strongly dependant on flight rates. It’s not fair to say $100,000 to orbit means $1,000,000 to lunar.

Assuming 50,000 passengers to luna (if Virgins sold, or sold reservations for, about that many to suborbital before flying anyone; I really think 50,000 to lunar surface is marketable) and that translates to 10,000 flights to Luna. Your uploading not only those people and supplies to LEO, but a lot of fuel and spare parts. [Note: your LEO to Luna transport needs to be shippable back to earth whole or in parts for major overhauls.]

I don't have the time to do the mass fractions, but aren’t we talking 50,000+ flights to Leo to support the 10,000 Leo to Luna? Wouldn't that imply enough economy of scale to drive cost to Leo way down? So perhaps $100,000 to LEO pre lunar tourism; would translate to $20,000 to LEO and $100,000 to Luna after Lunar tourism.

Effects of later Lunar fuel mining are not considered.

Posted by Kelly Starks at January 9, 2006 08:32 AM

Lunar tourism has a few problems orbital doesn't: no desination hotel, no abort to Earth's surface, higher prices, more transit time, no rescue capacity yet, no announced providers, no regulation, and others.

Orbital, therefore will at least be an emerging market before Lunar gets going. I agree that orbital will become the less interesting destination once Lunar becomes available at reasonable prices. But with every Lunar customer an orbital customer without direct to L-1 or direct to surface flights, there is a strong level of base demand for orbital. The price to orbit will always be lower than the price to the Moon. Therefore, utilization of orbit capacity is likely to be higher forever and certainly at first.

So there will have to be a learning curve and a cost reduction curve and early adopters will have to pay a lot. But the steady state price for Lunar tourism may be that low to Luna and orbit. The trick is to get it started and for that we need to supply from Earth.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at January 9, 2006 09:25 AM

Effects of later Lunar fuel mining are not considered.

My current hobby horse is that lunar LOX needs to be exploited as close to the beginning of our return to the Moon as possible. That changes the mass fraction ratios instantly.

Water ice would be grand but I'm not sanguine there is any exploitable water ice on the Moon. Finding it, digging it out and cracking into H2 & O2 will consume massive amounts of energy and heavy equipment. So, what's the worst case?

Roast the LOX from the rocks. We can do that and transport costs to/from Luna fall through the floor, even if all our hydrogen or methane come from Earth.

Posted by Bill White at January 9, 2006 10:51 AM

Roast the LOX from the rocks.

This also requires massive amounts of energy. Granted, it's thermal energy, but it's high grade heat, which is nearly as expensive as electrical energy. And don't tell me that sunlight is free on the moon -- the equipment to collect it (and reradiate it!) is not, and moving concentrators are likely to be as expensive as, or more expensive than, PV collectors or nuclear reactors producing electricity.

Posted by Paul Dietz at January 9, 2006 11:17 AM

Paul, why not just use a few thousand dollars of HomeDepot grade mylar stretched across a parabolic inflatable structure? Point the focal point at the target regolith, or at a fresnel lens that re-directs all the sunlight at the target regolith.

One admitted engineering hurdle: other stuff than O2 outgasses and clogs your optics.

Possible solution? Generate continuous air flow away from the optics and towards the collection side, inject small amounts of inert gas just inside the glass from the solar forge and create a draft or air flow headed away from the solar forge optics.

= = =

Electricty? If passive solar (Menard's grade mylar, this time) can heat the "hot" end of a Stirling cycle (or other heat engine) to 1000, or 1500 or 2000 degrees and the "cold end" consists of radiators deployed in the lunar shade, there is a temperature differential higher than most nukes put out.

Posted by Bill White at January 9, 2006 07:48 PM

PS to Paul - with all the handwaving deployment of genuine SSTO RLVs that goes on around here, why begrudge me a simple LOX roaster?

Cheers! :-)

Posted by Bill White at January 9, 2006 07:56 PM

Post a comment