From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Sat Dec 30 2000 - 13:08:52 MST
GBurch1@aol.com wrote:
>
> What are we to think of the news that Roton looks like it's crashing and the
> other "indie" booster-builders of the 1990s are either dead or dying? I hate
> to admit it, but like so many stories in the space arena, it looks like
> another case of "too little, too early." All of these endeavors seem to
> share a common theme: A single visionary who manages to sell an image of
> being able to "do it different this time" to just enough investors and
> engineers to get a highly visible start, followed by a painful, embarrassing
> failure before anything really gets off the ground. The community of space
> enthusiasts seems to have had such a short memory for these failures that the
> pattern has been able to repeat itself a number of times.
Mindset:
"We're going to make a space company. We're going to have lots of fun.
We're going to break the patterns. We'll pay lip service to actually
launching stuff since we can get money much faster by getting investors
hyped on the promise. Not that we're lying: we honestly hope and
believe that we'll build a launcher. It's just that selling the dream
is much more profitable than trying to realize the dream, and business
comes first.
"...what do you *mean*, the investors actually want to see stuff in
orbit? Panicpanicpanic! Oh, well, we've burned through all our money.
Say, how's Cousin Dotcom doing?"
Or is that too cynical a summary? (This is why, if I ever do a space
company, I will try to have a home-built launcher that I've actually
flown *before* going out for funding. A development process that
requires $millions before doing the first non-simulated test is not as
likely to produce results as one that does not.)
> For myself, at least, I've think I've finally gotten to the point that I
> won't be fooled again. The technology just hasn't gotten to the point that
> private venture investment can make a go of it. There aren't any
> intermediate steps to orbit to establish an incremental approach that
> smaller, private ventures can build on one step at a time: The initial
> threshold of success is just too high. Until material and manufacturing
> technology get to the point where a relatively small group of people can make
> a go of it n one relatively short push from start to finish, I think space
> access will continue to be the domain of governments and huge institutions.
> Go nanotech!
Go buisness model! I honestly don't see where the material and
manufacturing tech ever held these ventures up, so much as the fact
that they never got around to *using* even the cheap stuff that's out
there.
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