From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Sun Sep 29 2002 - 23:50:24 MDT
Technotranscendence wrote:
> Well, I hope that's the humble beginning of a hugh space tourism
> industry. XCOR Aerospace (www.xcor.com) seems poised to fill in the low
> end tourism gap. Trips to the ISS aboard Russian rockets are rumored to
> cost $20 million per person. XCOR's proposed Xerus, if it comes off
> will probably cost significantly less than that for a short duration
> suborbital flight. I'll make a guess and say it will probably be around
> $100,000 per per person per flight. (I don't recall XCOR actually
> talking numbers here.)
>
> Does Xerus or anything like it get us closer to the goal of space
> settlement? Maybe. It widens the market for space tourism and brings
> it into the reach of many more people. It's far easier to raise
> $100,000 than $20 million. Depending on market size, this could spur
> competition and, no doubt, if XCOR finds profit in this, it might fund
> more research and develop more ambitious space vehicles, such as an
> orbital rocket.
Just for the record, XCOR isn't the only private group trying to do
this. Though, IMO, they do have one of the best chances of success.
(And I'm not just saying that because I know one of their engineers - or
that I know he was recently, and probably still is, on this list and
therefore likely reading this message. ^_^;)
>>From there, it's only a short step to space hotels and the like. Once
> that kind of private presence is in space, I believe it will only be a
> matter of time before there's settlements -- at first very small scale
> ones. How so? Any temporary outpost like that will be easily
> upgradeable to a permanent one -- even if it still needs extensive
> support from Earth. (Who would be willing to pay for that? Imagine
> rich retirees who might prefer to live off world in their sunset years
> and spend their life's savings to do so. This is just one example.)
Imagine people merely wanting to escape perceived political or
environmental problems on Earth. Or who are just plain so enthralled by
the dream of space that it'd be worth it to them to live up there even
if they had to take drudge work as an indentured servant to pay for it -
though hopefully better arrangements can be made, for everyone's sake.
> So what can we do? As investors, of course, we can take bets on XCOR,
> which seems to have a good business model. However, one must be aware
> that this is a risky bet. I would not want to hear of anyone here
> taking out a second mortgage or raiding the 401(k) to buy shares of
> XCOR.:) It must be considered very speculative and, as such, only used
> with money one can do without. (I.e., if you don't have such money,
> don't get involved. This applies to all highly speculative investments.
> Look at the risks. You can lose money and space industry startups have
> a history of doing just that.)
And here is why I'm really responding to this. Last I heard (Doug: not
sure if you can speak to this, but if I'm wrong and you can correct me,
please), XCOR was not taking investors at this time. There are others
which are. Look around. None of us probably have direct control over
$millions, but some of us probably know, and can put words in with,
those who do. The objective is that the money get invested - it doesn't
have to be your money. The more startups there are that are seriously
trying (which includes having the funding to do so, but is definitely
*not* limited to just that; other factors include having a promising way
to address the problems that have caused so many others to fail, and
having a way to actually build and test fly the proposed hardware), the
greater the chance that this problem will be solved sooner.
(Full disclosure: I've been trying to get donations to fund a non-profit
I work with, ERPS, that's been doing much the same as XCOR, but with
slightly different technology choices - primarily fuel. Fully tax
deductible, and we aren't looking for $millions right now; most of our
contributions have been for less than $1K, though we can certainly make
good use of larger donations. What others fail to do with $billions,
we've done for less than $5K. Check http://www.erps.org/ for more - I'd
say more here, but that'd probably be crossing the line from disclosure
to spam.)
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