6,ooo,ooo Lb thrust

[Plane]

The Shuttle Endevor is up!

And is awesome.

Soon to be retired the shuttle program has been one the nations great dramas , how long to build its replacement?

[Universe Prince]

The real question is, how long to build the much needed and far too long delayed private sector successors to NASA?

[Plane]

I think Obama likes this idea , but more as a way to dump the responsibility than as a way to gain any advantage in space.

Sea launch looked good for a while , but there is such a steep initial investment that there are few establishments that have the wherewithall to try. Mostly governments.

What would a privateised space program look like?

[Universe Prince]

Impossible to say. I would guess plenty of tourism, probably plenty of commercial interests. I would hope some of those asteroid mines I read about in science fiction would become a reality in some fashion. I suspect there would be at least one hotel in orbit. But after that, I don't know. The market has a way of doing things no one anticipates.

[Plane]

How do non government entitys overcome the enormous initial cost ?

[Universe Prince]

Wealthy people who have the drive will do it. With things like the X Prize helping to drive people to find ways to innovate, and the potential future earnings of moving into space also hanging like a carrot in front of the people willing to make the effort, private space travel et al is on the way. It is just a matter of when. People like Burt Rutan and Richard Branson are already working to make it happen. It won't come soon or easily, but it'll happen, I have little doubt.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Private Space endeavors will probably greatly resemble private undersea endeavors: lots of ways to part very rich fools from their money, not a lot of science, and at least a few major ripoffs. But eventually, and very slowly, something useful may come of it. At the same time, the Chinese and others will come up with discoveries that will cause said private programs to look rather incompetent and silly.

[kimba1]

for some reason I can`t help notice how different in technology of the space capsule to the shuttle and in the near future someone while design something super easy to built that will out perform everything else



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvage_1

[Plane]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvage_1


I used to really like that show.  I recall that they were depending on an impossibly powerfull fuel that made high thrust rocketry simple.

Christopher Colombus was useing government funding for exploration , so were several other explorers that opened the "new World" to the old. Pretty soon some of these guys turned a profit, even finding Gold on Mars might not do that for us.

[kimba1]

ben bova wrote a very huge series of books about this.

shame I didn`t didn`t read them

my question is what can be mined in space that would be worth going there?