I’ll also be doing light posting. I’m having dinner and a ZEROG flight with Buzz Aldrin. There still appears to be some availability. If you can get to Vegas by 6:30 tonight, you can make the dinner and the ride prep starts tomorrow at one. The price is $8,900; it’s more than the regular price of $3,500, but less than $144k for a flight with Stephen Hawking. At $3500 for 25 seconds * 12 parabolas at 0g is $700/minute. That’s about a quarter the price per minute of a week in 0g on the International Space Station.
All posts by Sam Dinkin
Space Property Rights Open Letter
Glenn,
I enjoyed your space property rights article. I am a big advocate of space property rights [here, here and here].
I don’t think a race is useful.
Biggest Mistake If Hopes Realized
EADS repeated that it is hoping to close funding for a suborbital rocket in early 2008. I’ve decided I wasn’t harsh enough with my last post. For $1.3 billion, one could probably buy at least seven of the following companies: Rocketplane, XCOR, The Space Ship Company, Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space Systems, Benson, TGV and Blue Origin. That would leave enough money to send all their suborbital vehicle programs through test flights. One might even be able to use the left over money to also pick up Virgin Galactic, Incredible Adventures and Space Adventures. If you are funding the EADS suborbital rocket, consider putting out an RFP instead. Even if you are a government. You might get seven to ten local new space companies with more than one successfully entering a viable vehicle into commercial service for the price of one old-space program.
Zero Divided By Zero = Space Solar Power
Taylor Dinerman thinks that solar power is the answer to China’s future electric power woes:
While China may turn to widespread use of nuclear power plants, the Communist Party leadership is certainly aware of the role that glasnost and the Chernobyl disaster played in the downfall of another Communist superpower. Thus, China may be reluctant to rely heavily on nuclear power plants, at least not without strong safety measures, thus making them more expensive and more time consuming to build. Wind power and terrestrial solar power will not be able to contribute much to meeting China
Green is the New Black
Congratulations Al Gore.
The Sun shines more energy in an hour on us than we generate as a species in a year so human heat production is not yet much of a factor in climate (but this could change if we keep doubling it). If greenhouse gases cause heating which gets reinforced by lower albedo due to the ice caps melting that would be news. Fortunately, heat radiation goes up as the fourth power of temperature according to the Stephan-Boltzmann Law. So runaway greenhouse is not in the cards.
Let’s tax some coal; that would be cool. Cutting back $50 worth of gasoline use cuts back one fill up. Cutting back $50 worth of coal cuts back two tons. The Party that does it probably won’t win West Virginia in the next election.
Gift Loophole?
Is anybody else troubled that someone can give a sitting Justice of the Supreme Court $1.5 million for a book deal, but I can’t give him a $100 gift?
Here’s a spot where FEC monitoring of money flows would be useful. I want to hear what the Justices have to say, so banning book deals seems wrong. But this appears to be an easy way for a single entity to influence a Justice’s decisions. I think everyone should have a chance to give Thomas money to influence his decisions just like we do by donating to elected officials’ campaigns.
I wonder how Thomas will dispel the appearance of impropriety. If he waits until 2009, he may get impeached.
—Update 2:30 PM CDT—
My commenters seem to think there is no appearance of impropriety. So I guess if you want to buy influence with a non-elected official, offer them a $1.5 million book deal.
Talking Turkey About Human Spaceflight
On Friday, Russell Prechtl and George Whitesides respond to Steven Weinberg’s dissing of spaceflight in pursuit of science.
To sum up: Space settlement for species preservation, spinoffs, human spirit and human nature.
What are these worth? Depending on how long before the extinction event it could be anywhere from all of Earth’s discounted GDP to nearly nothing for species preservation assurance. If an extinction event is 1 in 26 million per year we can take our chances and still have an expectation of 99.99999% of our GDP next year. Spinoffs is weak. Human spirit is hard to quantify. How is ISS doing more for human spirit than Skylab or Mir? Human nature is more of a restatement of the human spirit argument that it is human nature to seek to raise the human spirit. But how? It’s not enough when someone says “ISS is worthless” to say “but if we don’t learn to live in space we’ll die!” We can learn to live in space with or without the ISS; what’s the difference?
I’m planning to take Steven Weinberg to lunch and see what he says to these arguments later this week. Let me know if there’s anything else I should ask him.
EADS Sub Orbital Business Case?
Michael Belfiore reviews the EADS idea of building a suborbital business jet. At the $1.3 billion price tag and unit cost presumably in the high tens of millions, the business case is iffy. In particular, it would probably be a lot cheaper to spin out the Rocketplane XP project out of Rocketplane Kistler and end up with a product that could fly a few years sooner and more seats for the same money.
The Futron study Jeff implicitly cited saying 15,000 customers for suborbital space travel in 2015. If we get 4 providers, it’s hard to see how prices stay much above the marginal cost of the fourth provider. RpK and XCOR might have revised their cost estimates since they were estimated as south of $50,000 back when Space Adventures were selling suborbital seats for $100k each. But let’s be generous and say that EADS rivals are going to push the price down to $100k by 2015. This is lower than the implicit Futron estimate of $140k if flight starts in 2009, spends 3 years at $200k then works it’s way down to $50k in 2021.
At $100k, they could get perhaps $50k in debt payments per seat. They would need 6,500 customers per year to pay 25% interest and 9,400 customers per year to pay back the loan in 9 years. But they are unlikely to get 2/3 of the market if they are fourth to market with a higher price structure. If EADS is indeed the high cost provider, the estimate of how much each flight will contribute to debt repayment is $0. The capacity required to fly 9,400 customers per year at two flights per week per craft with four seats is 23 craft which would add another billion in debt if they are $45 million each.
Good Article John!
Tierney wrote a better article than I could Tuesday about why the legacy for the ages that can happen in our lifetimes is the first footprints on Mars. The sponsor could be remembered as the next “Prince Henry the Navigator, King Ferdinand, [or] Queen Isabella”. This is an argument I implied here in a scholarly way and in passing here in a grandiose way and a whimsical way here. In the process I attempt to refute Jeff Bell and James Van Allen who are both opposed.
Orbital Turkey
Fellow Austinite and Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg is quoted by Ker Than, space.com saying that the space station is “an ‘orbital turkey.’ I could almost say no science has come out of it.”
Perhaps our space efforts should be about settlement instead?