On Sunday, December 31, 2000 6:32 AM Greg Burch GBurch1@aol.com wrote:
> Actually, before I even posted my message I thought "1) I hope Doug Jones
> pipes up (pun intended) - maybe he'll give us more details about XCOR's
> ultimate plans and 2) saying 'go nanotech!' will probably make me look
like a
> passive singulatarian." So, some clarifications and responses.
Well, you have to admit, too many people rely on some future prediction to
get them out of a tight spot. You know, the types who say, "I have a
cryonics policy, so why bother taking supplements, eating right, or
exercising?" (No offense to the cryonics community. Even so, I've met
people like exactly this.)
> On the latter item, my point was to say that advancing material and
> manufacturing science WILL inevitably lower the threshold for building
> machines complex, capable and reliable enough to get to orbit.
Ultimately,
> it will get cheap and easy enough that relatively small groups with modest
> financing CAN do it with reasonable business models. Where the two lines
> cross is anybody's guess at this point, but it's probably somewhere short
of
> full-blown Drextech. (For example, consider the debacle with the fuel
tank
> on the Venture Star - or whatever they're calling it now - relatively
> straightforward advances in composite materials technology will make a big
> difference.)
I agree with this, but I'd rather not bank on it. I think we can have a
successful rocket company now. To paraphrase Adrian, "Go business plan!"
Unless I'm very misinformed, all of these small private launch companies
from the 1980s and 1990s tried (or are trying) to make unique, new launch
vehicles. Not so much unique in propulsion methods, but just not off the
shelf.
For instance, though I wish Roton all the best and hope their idea works and
eventually gets to market, when I first saw it, I laughed. I thought, if
you want a recipe for failure, this is it. A manned launch vehicle that
relies on a propeller to land. I was happily surprised when they did their
test flights. I like being wrong when I'm pessimistic or cynical, but I
still think the idea is a bit too complicated to put into practice right now
or even in the near future.
> On the other hand, as I think about what kind of intermediate steps might
> make sense, I wonder whether they can represent meaningful economic way
> stations on the path to a truly revolutionary approach to the business of
> getting into space. The most obvious intermediate step seems to be
> propulsion which, as far as I can tell from what's publicly available from
> XCOR's web site, seems to be the approach it is taking. But aren't there
> already plenty of rocket engine manufacturers, especially with the
Russians
> now in the global market? Unless you've developed some significant
> improvements in manufacturing and/or operating efficiencies, have you
really
> gotten any closer to building a truly new avenue to orbit?
Why a new one? Why not take old, working engines whose patents have expired
and just mass produce them?
The other types of support and non-launch space services and stuff you
mention from SpaceDev are great examples of other ways to get a space
company to IPO and to get funding for developing launch services.
Happy New Year!
Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:44 MDT