From: Doug Jones (random@qnet.com)
Date: Thu Mar 23 2000 - 09:56:06 MST
"d.brin" wrote:
>
> ABSTRACT: What daring 21st century concepts or projects would you most like to see pursued, if money were no object?
I forwarded this to my boss, Jeff Greason, who wears the "corporate
visionary" hat among others. This is Jeff's rough draft:
*********
1) Of course, Mars exploration. A $10B prize for the first
humans to land on Mars and safely return would probably
produce results within ten years. Better to fund as a
prize -- only pick the winner.
2) (off-the-wall, but critical!)
Orbiting luxury hotel w/artificial gravity
* Think was the Las Vegas strip did for settling the desert West
* Drives a market for cheap passenger transport
* Pays for key infrastructure for large LEO construction
* Creates key market for cheap access to space
* All this, and probably profitable, too (though time
horizon to payback is long)
* $10B project (I know some have looked at it seriously)
* Appeals more to the "investment" crowd than the
"philanthropy" crowd -- but needs a touch of
vision to invest.
3) BIG prizes for cheap access to space
* By dropping the cost for any space endeavor,
opens up huge new horizons for economic
exploitation of space resources
* If private capital, best form probably takes
the role of a guaranteed market: pay to
launch 20,000 tons of payload (water, if
nothing else), at $100 per pound -- no more
than 100 tons per trip, no less than 400 pounds
per trip. The resulting $2B market (but profitable
only at low price!) would do ten times as much for
space access as the $40B the government
has spent in the last decade or so.
* The restrictions on max or min payload per
trip ensure that usefully large vehicles are
used, and keep someone from winning it with a
"one shot" mega-expendable. Even the largest
size allowed takes 200 flights, and is about
the right size for a vehicle for orbital
construction -- but if someone wants to make
it with 20,000 flights of a one-ton low cost
reusable, great!
* Many new entrants could raise financing for
cheap launch vehicles because of the assured
market
* The prize only funds the winner(s) -- and the
"first come, first served" nature of the market
encourages speed
* This isn't exactly a "prize" -- anybody can carry
it, as fast as they can, until the full load is
up
* Spend a small amount ($50M) making a
payload container which can dock with
other payload containers and keep orbital
station -- carry the water (or dirt, or aluminum)
up in those cans -- the resulting resource can
be sold off for fuel or radiation shielding for
space stations or hotels. That adds an
"investment" spin and ensures the prize
is itself useful, in addition to it's
prime purpose in stimulating cheap launch
4) Fully fund the X-prize -- and bump it $5M every 2
years until somebody wins it. Kick-starts
orbital tourism for a bargain price.
5) Establish a prize for the first orbital tourist
vehicle -- analogous to the X-prize, but
up the ante to orbital velocity and to
carrying at least a dozen tourist loads.
$50M ought to be enough to attract serious
interest, -- bump it $10M every 2 years until
somebody wins it.
Another nice aspect of "prizes" is that the
ego of the donors can be stroked; everyone
can be competing for the "Hilton cup", or
the "Harold B. Crittenden prize"
6) There are GOOD fusion energy approaches
languishing for lack of funds. Again, I'd
recommend a "prize" approach. $100M for
engineering breakeven ought to result in
a win within ten years (I'm betting on
electrostatic or electrodynamic confinement,
but we could all be surprised). Or, if
environmental concerns rule, make it
$200M but specify "no tritium" (D-D,
D-He3, or H-B11 would all still be options)
7) Jump-start the third world with non-polluting
power. Really helps the environment by
encouraging a less-damaging energy
economy in the developing countries. One
possibilities:
* Cheap PV technologies suffer from
difficult barriers to entry, as the
market is a bit small for good ROI.
Buy $100M in PV power units at a
price of $2/watt. (No more
than 50 kW per unit). Divvy them up
among poor countries to be raffled off
to the highest bidder (don't *give* them
away -- sell them, that way they go to
people who have some idea how to use
them. Just sell them for less than you
paid for them! Poor people and villages
in the third world get power (for water
pumping & purification, light, refrigeration),
and the developed world use of PV
technology also increases, as price of
PV is now competitive with other
forms of energy production.
* Once that works, similar ideas abound,
for using that power -- a cheap electric
freezer, suitable for "one per village"
use, with integrated batteries, powered
by your local PV grid. A small electric
water pump/water tank combination with
an integrated UV disinfection unit, to
bring clean water to poor communities.
(Then another philanthropist can offer
a similar deal with solar water heaters)
As long as you *sell* it to locals for
something, it will go to people who will
*figure out for themselves* details like
plumbing, how to charge to recover their
costs, etc.
(This was inspired by the recent success
of the cell-phone loan program in
Bangladesh, showing that if you can
give local entrepreneurs the chance to
buy something useful, they find ways
to sell their excess capacity to others
and jump-start a local economy -- lots
of nice side-effects, and it lets
economic activity grow from the bottom
up, rather than the unsuccessful "top down"
approaches of foreign aid).
*********
This is why I'm a plumber and he's the CEO :)
-- Doug Jones Rocket Plumber, XCOR Aerospace http://www.xcor-aerospace.com
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