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  1. - Top - End - #1
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    Griffon

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    Default How to make space exploration profitable.

    Following on from the life on the moon thread, if a little over one pound of e.g. toffee (because that's easy to make, something easier would be better, but I'm not a sweetmaker so I don't know what's easier than toffee) was made in space, and divided into pieces of approximately one half, one quarter, one eighth, one sixteenth down to perhap a one tenth of a gram size, then each piece auctioned off with a reserve price of three times the cost of production including the costs of taking the ingredients to orbit and bringing the product back down, I think that with a nice little certificate of authenticity those would sell.
    Last edited by halfeye; 2019-02-05 at 12:32 PM.
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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    It's a very nice idea. They could auction of, say, broken parts of the space station too, when they bring them down. The problem, I think, is that the novelty might wear off pretty quickly, so it's probably not a long-term thing?
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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    A quick google tells me that at current prices a satellite costs anywhere between $50 and $400 million to put into space. The cost of said launch is so oversized that the cost of fabricating the satellite is practically irrelevant*. If you could instead fabricate it in space, you could easily save 90% of that cost.

    Grey Wolf

    ETA: * some more googling suggests that some satellites can cost to fabricate as much as the launch cost. Still, saving ~50% of the total cost by fabricating them outside the Earth's gravity well is still a heck of a saving.
    Last edited by Grey_Wolf_c; 2019-02-05 at 03:11 PM.
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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Here's an article about a company that wants to send coffee beans up in a rocket and use the re-entry heat to roast them.

    https://arstechnica.com/science/2019...sted-in-space/

    They say that the roasting is more even because the beans will be in freefall, but this definitely isn't the case since the beans will be under a huge acceleration when in the re-entry stage. Technical quibbles aside, since I highly doubt the resulting roast would be better than any terrestrial methods, the plan is just a way to separate rich people from their money, as the exclusivity of the space coffee might make it desirable.

    That said, aside from making luxury goods based on a perceived rarity, there is supposedly a business case to make fibreoptic cable made in freefall could be better than what is made on Earth and would be worth the cost of getting the materials into orbit.

    Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
    A quick google tells me that at current prices a satellite costs anywhere between $50 and $400 million to put into space. The cost of said launch is so oversized that the cost of fabricating the satellite is practically irrelevant. If you could instead fabricate it in space, you could easily save 90% of that cost.

    Grey Wolf
    The $400M price tag for a launch is really only for payloads that require the Delta IV Heavy rocket. The only regular customer for Delta IV Heavy is the US Department of Defense and NASA, since they are the only ones building payloads heavy enough to require the extra power, or that are going into deep space (like the Parker Solar Probe near-flyby of the Sun, which requires a ridiculous amount of energy to get to).

    Regular Geostationary satellites will usually ride on Falcon 9, Atlas V, or Ariane 5, which cost between about $60M to $150M depending on the options. For example, ULA (Atlas V and Delta IV) has a base price of $109M to put 4,750 kg into a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO), up to $153M for 8,900kg to GTO. Ariane is about the same, though they can put two smaller satellites into GTO on a single flight, which can save some cost. SpaceX is currently the cheapest option, with the base price starting at $62M for 5,500kg to GTO, and is driving the price point down.

    Falcon Heavy will also be cutting into the Delta IV Heavy manifest for large payloads since they are much cheaper, and also provide a new options for smaller satellites. For example, SpaceX will be using Falcon Heavy to put Arabsat 6A into GSO. At 6,000kg any traditional launcher which expend the booster would be able to be used, but with the extra power Falcon Heavy provides, it can be brought to a higher transfer orbit so that the satellite can use less of its own fuel getting into its final geostationary orbit, which will increase its service life. All three of the boosters are planned to be recovered which help decrease the cost, as they can put 8,500 kg into GTO for $90M.

    To build weather or communication satellites, though, costs ~$200M-$500M, so while the launch cost is significant, at less than or about $100M, it is not the major expenditure of the project.

    Additionally, if you are considering manufacturing in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), these rockets can bring up a lot more mass, but at that point they are constrained by the volume. SpaceX doesn't show the cost, but on a fully expended Falcon 9, they can put up to 22,800 kg into LEO. The estimated price for an expended Falcon 9 is about $90M (it's not a coincidence that this is the same price as a Falcon Heavy, they want to drive customers to use recoverable boosters), so it costs a minimum of $3,950/kg to put something into orbit, assuming you can actually cram that much mass into the payload fairing.
    Last edited by monomer; 2019-02-05 at 03:57 PM.

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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    Following on from the life on the moon thread, if a little over one pound of e.g. toffee (because that's easy to make, something easier would be better, but I'm not a sweetmaker so I don't know what's easier than toffee) was made in space, and divided into pieces of approximately one half, one quarter, one eighth, one sixteenth down to perhap a one tenth of a gram size, then each piece auctioned off with a reserve price of three times the cost of production including the costs of taking the ingredients to orbit and bringing the product back down, I think that with a nice little certificate of authenticity those would sell.
    I think I just found a market for my
    'totally legit, not at all fake, look, you can basically taste the authentic certificate space toffee'

    More seriously, space travel is, as others pointed out, EXPENSIVE. You'd need a really big price tag to make a profit on that. And I doubt you'd get more than for some authentic moon rock (tm). The few people who'd spend serious money on this are (I think) not going to make it profitable, unless you want to just get out even.

    I think I have to agree with the statement that you can only really make a profit by going space industry, and that just takes a load of investment..
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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by monomer View Post
    They say that the roasting is more even because the beans will be in freefall, but this definitely isn't the case since the beans will be under a huge acceleration when in the re-entry stage. Technical quibbles aside, since I highly doubt the resulting roast would be better than any terrestrial methods, the plan is just a way to separate rich people from their money, as the exclusivity of the space coffee might make it desirable.
    Scott Manley did a video on that very subject, which pretty much agrees with your assessment:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iguAge6m8LA

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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kato View Post
    I think I just found a market for my
    'totally legit, not at all fake, look, you can basically taste the authentic certificate space toffee'
    Sure that would happen. It would be fraud, and the ordinary police would ordinarily bust the perpetrators when they found them.

    More seriously, space travel is, as others pointed out, EXPENSIVE. You'd need a really big price tag to make a profit on that. And I doubt you'd get more than for some authentic moon rock (tm). The few people who'd spend serious money on this are (I think) not going to make it profitable, unless you want to just get out even.
    I think you're mistaken. There are seven billion people on this planet, and a lot of them are rich, there are hundreds of poor people for every rich one, but there are a lot of rich people.

    There was that woman who won the auction for that Banksy artwork that then self shredded, she had the offer to not pay and not have it, but she wanted it even after it was shredded, paid £1M, presumably because it was still rare.

    I think I have to agree with the statement that you can only really make a profit by going space industry, and that just takes a load of investment..
    If people were sane, you would be correct.
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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Hm, I'm still not really sold on the idea. Mind you, I'm not a great economist.
    But I'll voice my concerns anyway.

    First off, yes, there are a lot of people with way too much money. And I'm sure some of them are into space stuff, but enough to make it a market? That kind of requires them to buy a lot, not just one expensive item. And for things like the shredded painting, there's rarity value. The next shredded painting isn't going to sell nearly as well, the second (batch of) toffee will be much cheaper than the first.
    I guess toffee was just an example but I don't think something 'made in' space has much more value than something 'brought from' space, then again those values are mostly subjective.
    And going back to the painting, production value is far different between the two.

    I'm not saying you can't make a profit off of space, but I don't see commodity items being something you can make a real market out of. Cheap commodities work because they are cheap to make and sell easily to a wide audience. Space commodity would be the opposite in both.

    Of course that refers to current times. If we ever have proper trade between earth and space selling all things, including toffee, can likely make you a profit.
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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kato View Post
    Hm, I'm still not really sold on the idea. Mind you, I'm not a great economist.
    But I'll voice my concerns anyway.

    First off, yes, there are a lot of people with way too much money. And I'm sure some of them are into space stuff, but enough to make it a market? That kind of requires them to buy a lot, not just one expensive item.
    There are millions of rich folk.

    And for things like the shredded painting, there's rarity value.
    The painting is unique. But you could start a chocolate factory in space and chocolate from space would still be rare.

    The next shredded painting isn't going to sell nearly as well, the second (batch of) toffee will be much cheaper than the first.
    Correct, but will it make a profit? I think so.

    I guess toffee was just an example but I don't think something 'made in' space has much more value than something 'brought from' space, then again those values are mostly subjective.
    Moon rocks are hugely valuable, for dozens of scientific reasons as well as their rarity, but rarity is a part of their appeal/price.

    And going back to the painting, production value is far different between the two.
    Between which two? I don't understand that statement.

    I'm not saying you can't make a profit off of space, but I don't see commodity items being something you can make a real market out of. Cheap commodities work because they are cheap to make and sell easily to a wide audience. Space commodity would be the opposite in both.
    The commodity in the item would be that it has been to, or was made in, orbit, and is thus very, very rare. One of the virtues of toffee for this purpose is that to eat toffee you need enough, you can't reasonably sell a smaller amount than can be tasted.

    Of course that refers to current times. If we ever have proper trade between earth and space selling all things, including toffee, can likely make you a profit.
    The point of doing this would be to help get our civilisation from here (barely getting to orbit) to there (trading between the Earth (and maybe some of the other planets?) and space).
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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    There are millions of rich folk.
    That depends on your definition of "rich." In the U.S., there are currently only 11 million or so "millionaires," defined as folks with more than a million U.S. dollars worth of assets. Note, "assets" does not mean "money to burn." IIRC, economists usually focus on liquid assets--stuff that can easily be converted to cash or otherwise turned into useful stuff, so that includes both stuff that you would fairly readily spend on something you want (stocks, bank accounts, etc.) and stuff that you could technically get money out of fairly easily, but you probably wouldn't sell to fund your space toffee habit (i.e., your house.)

    America isn't the most populous nation in the world by any stretch, but it is the wealthiest. Contrast China, which has the highest population and one of the biggest economies, but has fewer than 2 million "high wealth individuals" (the cut off is roughly equivalent to $1.5 million U.S.) Now, even if we assume that China has several times that number who are above $1 million but below $1.5 million, that's only maybe 20 million millionaires. Now we look at smaller, but even wealthier developed nations. Great Britain for example has fewer than a million millionaires. That's in pounds, of course, so using the same reasoning as China, let's scale that up to a few million. Russia, at under 200,000, was only 15th place for number of millionaires. By one account, there are 36 million "millionaires" in the world.

    That would be a lot if they were all Richard Branson level spenders, but they're not: 36 million is the hard limit on the number of Richard Bransons, not the actual count. Even though the lower 99% of the top 1% are secure, comfortable, and more than capable of supporting a few luxury industries, they have their limits. If you're selling thousand-dollar purses and making hundreds of dollars off each, you can get a pretty large number of those 36 million millionaires to buy at least a few. If you're selling hundred-thousand-dollar cars, you'll have a much smaller percentage able to make a purchase, but probably still enough to make a profit.

    It gets really difficult when you try to create an industry where the initial investment could potentially exceed the billion-dollar mark, but the major value of the end-product is its scarcity. Industries that require a high initial investment work best when you can really ramp up production, spread that investment over millions of sales, and eventually make a profit. However, if you're making enough space toffee for millions of people, it dilutes that value.

    The painting is unique. But you could start a chocolate factory in space and chocolate from space would still be rare.
    Rare is not unique. Artificial rarity, in particular, requires a tenuous balance. Moreover, people don't become billionaires (and if we're talking about making space sustainable, let alone profitable, we need billionaires, not millionaires) by being stupid with their money. For people with more important things to buy and not enough money to buy it, spending millions of dollars of seems stupid, but for a wealthy collector, trading money on that particular luxury is no more wasteful than spending it on a different luxury that brings you less pleasure, or investing it in order to make even more money that you're afraid to "waste" on something you would enjoy. However, buying Xeno's toffee would be stupid on so many levels.
    Last edited by Xyril; 2019-02-06 at 07:05 PM.

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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    Scott Manley did a video on that very subject, which pretty much agrees with your assessment:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iguAge6m8LA
    Note that Scott Manley *did* point out that he is a huge fan of "space based beer", where not only is the "space ingredient" the yeast, but presumably they aren't all that picky about considering later generations of yeast "equally space beer". So they are able to sell a lot more product than ever went into space.

    Granted there is little intrinsic superiority to "space beer", but the argument that "null gee roasting" is superior is pretty weak. Null/low gee fiber optics might be better, but I recall (pre-International Space Station) a much longer list of things believed to be better built in space.

    - Furiously ignoring the question of "is the surface of an inhabited planet the ideal location for an exponentially growing industrial economy"?

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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
    A quick google tells me that at current prices a satellite costs anywhere between $50 and $400 million to put into space. The cost of said launch is so oversized that the cost of fabricating the satellite is practically irrelevant*. If you could instead fabricate it in space, you could easily save 90% of that cost.

    Grey Wolf

    ETA: * some more googling suggests that some satellites can cost to fabricate as much as the launch cost. Still, saving ~50% of the total cost by fabricating them outside the Earth's gravity well is still a heck of a saving.
    Where are you getting those numbers? Yes the cost of a satellite is $50-500 million. But the launch costs of a satellite are not more than the satellite cost.

    Over a decade ago when I worked in the space launch industry (c. 2000), the assumption for a communication satellite (the $300-500mil cost satellites) was $150-200mil. The Atlas IIAR/III was marketed with a projected sales cost of $100mil and a build cost of $65mil (it never reached volume to reach those numbers). And, if you are talking a $50mil satellite, then you are probably piggy backing with up to 5 other "small" satellites on a single launch.

    If you look at current public numbers you find:
    Falcon 9 at $62mil
    Falcon Heavy at $90mil
    Atlas V $164-173mil (configuration dependent)
    Delta IV $400mil (that number might be for a classified launch)

    http://money.com/money/5135565/elon-...t-launch-cost/
    https://www.quora.com/Rockets-What-i...ght-into-space

    But, in short, the numbers are not apples to apples. Not only do the vehicles have different satellite mass capabilities, they have different launch profiles, faring dimensions, vibration profiles, etc. And the costs are not* always counting exactly the same costs (integration, facility, post launch management, insurance...)

    * EDIT: add "not"

    EDIT: and in the end, even a $400mil launch cost does not make the cost of a $50-500mil satellite cost irrelevant.

    Spoiler: Rebuttal on $442 mil number
    Show
    (Note the $442mil competitive number is NOT for a commercial launch. That is for a classified launch of the Atlas V. Classified launches are, as you can see, many times more expensive than a commercial launch. And if Falcon Heavy ever gets certified for classified launches, the cost Space X charges will be many time more than $92mil. And, you don't put a $1bil classified satellite on a launch vehicle that doesn't maximize reliability, after all, saving $100mil on a $1bil program isn't worth the risk.)


    As for the toffee idea, depending upon how much you send, just to get it to space is $10k-20k per kilogram. Then you have to build the satellite/factory and the return system. So, the cost of your toffee is $20k-40k per kg. Say $20k. Then you have to mark that up for overhead, marketing, distribution and profit. So, how many of those millionaires would pay $40,000 for a kilogram of toffee?

    And, you need to do at least 5000kg of toffee in order to get those "bulk" prices. Maybe you can find 5000 millionaires suckers?
    Last edited by LordEntrails; 2019-02-07 at 10:19 PM.

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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails View Post
    Where are you getting those numbers? Yes the cost of a satellite is $50-500 million. But the launch costs of a satellite are not more than the satellite cost.
    Doesn't it depend on how big the satellite is? I thought launch costs were usually a certain amount per kilo?

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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    Doesn't it depend on how big the satellite is? I thought launch costs were usually a certain amount per kilo?
    It takes a certain amount of energy to take mass into orbit, and that certainly accounts for a large chunk of the costs, but as others have mentioned in this thread, there are numerous other factors that also contribute to the cost of a launch. If someone's selling secondary payload space on a rocket, charging a cost per mass (and probably imposing some per-mass volume limit as well) would make sense. However, I don't think cost is something that simply scales linearly with mass no matter what. (i.e., sending up a single payload that's twice as heavy as what an Atlas V can carry to low earth orbit probably won't cost exactly twice as much.)

    The biggest thing to remember is that engineering limits what can be done but economics limit what will be done. There's absolutely no reason you can't send up a satellite that costs less than its launch costs. However, from the information everyone else here has provided, it seems clear that nobody (except possibly Elon Musk) thinks it would be worthwhile to do so. For research in particular, it's amazing how much money you can burn squeezing extra precision into your instruments, and if you're spending millions on a launch anyway, it doesn't make sense to limit your results to shave a few hundred thousand going cheap.

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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails View Post
    As for the toffee idea, depending upon how much you send, just to get it to space is $10k-20k per kilogram. Then you have to build the satellite/factory and the return system. So, the cost of your toffee is $20k-40k per kg. Say $20k. Then you have to mark that up for overhead, marketing, distribution and profit. So, how many of those millionaires would pay $40,000 for a kilogram of toffee?

    And, you need to do at least 5000kg of toffee in order to get those "bulk" prices. Maybe you can find 5000 millionaires suckers?
    The point would initially be to make the first 1kg, and sell it by the gram or less. As someone said, the second 1kg would make a lot less than the first. Toffee may not be the best sweet to make, I just remember tales of people making it at home, so presumably it could be made on the ISS as the ISS currently is, without specialist equipment. Sugar is about £1 per kg? (I haven't bought any in years) and it's the main ingredient. The main cost would be the lift to orbit and the recovery. Would you pay $80 for a gram of guaranteed real space toffee? Would any rich people pay $80,000 for 1kg? It's not about the value for money, it's about the rarity, which is why for the first 1kg at least an auction would be a good way to sell it. It would also be to a slight extent about helping to pay for space exploration.
    Last edited by halfeye; 2019-02-07 at 01:35 PM.
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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    Doesn't it depend on how big the satellite is? I thought launch costs were usually a certain amount per kilo?
    Not really. You pay for the rocket you're bringing your payload up on. So as I previously said, SpaceX's Falcon 9 base price is $62M to bring up to 5,500 kg to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit. They don't publish prices for Low Earth Orbit (LEO), but as long as the mass is low enough for them to be able to recover the first-stage booster, the price would be comparable. If you need to bring up less mass, the price is the same. The reasoning for this is that the cost of rocket fuel for a launch on a Falcon 9 is about $200,000, which is basically nothing when compared to the cost of building the rocket (~$30M for the F9 first stage and ~$20-30M for the inter-stage, second-stage, and fairing).

    If you want to save money on your launch, you can go to a less powerful rocket, assuming there is one that meets your needs. Currently the cheapest rocket flying to orbit is the RocketLab Electron, which can get up to 225 kg to orbit for $6M. Now, on a $/kg basis, it is pretty bad compared to SpaceX, but if all you need is one small satellite and you don't want to deal with the hassle of a rideshare (where a number of different payloads are included in one big rocket), this is an option. From there price an capability go up, but after a point, since SpaceX was able to drive their prices so low (due designing a low-cost rocket and being able to recover the booster), wasting the extra capability of the Falcon 9 is worth the price. Probably the most cost efficient mid-point option is India's PSLV which costs about $20-30M to bring $3,800 kg to low-earth orbit.

    ULA (Boeing and Lockheed Consortium) has a bit of a different approach, in that the Atlas V is a dial-a-rocket. It starts at the baseline Atlas V 401 which does not use any solid-rocket boosters, starting at a price of $109M to bring 9,800 kg to low-earth orbit. You can then start adding in solid-rocket boosters and better second stages to get up to 18,800 kg to LEO with the Atlas V 551, though that brings the cost up to $153M. They have a pretty nifty website where you can configure your launch, but the prices quoted need to be taken with a grain of salt since they are not the actual prices and include possible savings based on "value" such as assured timelines.

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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    Doesn't it depend on how big the satellite is? I thought launch costs were usually a certain amount per kilo?
    As others have said, mostly it is not a cost per kg to launch. It costs X dollars to launch a rocket, and that rocket can carry up to X kilograms. If you don't use all the capability (or the payload envelope, size and dimensions are very important) then maybe someone else with a scientific satellite will jump on board and try to buy up the excess capability. But, since space, launch profile, and destination is important, they secondary payloads may not work with a less than "full" primary payload.

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    The point would initially be to make the first 1kg, and sell it by the gram or less. As someone said, the second 1kg would make a lot less than the first. Toffee may not be the best sweet to make, I just remember tales of people making it at home, so presumably it could be made on the ISS as the ISS currently is, without specialist equipment. Sugar is about £1 per kg? (I haven't bought any in years) and it's the main ingredient. The main cost would be the lift to orbit and the recovery. Would you pay $80 for a gram of guaranteed real space toffee? Would any rich people pay $80,000 for 1kg? It's not about the value for money, it's about the rarity, which is why for the first 1kg at least an auction would be a good way to sell it. It would also be to a slight extent about helping to pay for space exploration.
    Yea, so if you only want to make 1kg of toffee, then that kilogram doesn't cost $40k, instead it costs $100 million or such. That's because you still have to build the satellite to make the toffee (regardless of how much toffee it makes) and you still have to buy the launch. Sure, you get to go on as a secondary payload, but you still need a cheap ($50 mil) satellite and a cheap ($50 mil) launch.

    Payload cost per kilogram does NOT scale :)

    So now, even if you get a really cheap satellite somehow ($10 mil) and a find just the right secondary payload and get a discount for some reason ($10 mil) then you are down to $20mil/kg and lets see, $20,000,000/1,000g = $20,000 per gram. Before you make a profit and only if you somehow get your costs down so incredibly far.

    Sure, auction, that's a way to guarantee a profit *not*

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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Well, they said on the ISS. Presumably, you could get a packet of sugar to the ISS.

    That said, I'm not sure they'd allow astronauts to use sugar in space. Dust of any kind of a giant no-no.
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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    Well, they said on the ISS. Presumably, you could get a packet of sugar to the ISS.

    That said, I'm not sure they'd allow astronauts to use sugar in space. Dust of any kind of a giant no-no.
    Yes I said on the ISS. I'm not sure toffee is the best idea, you have to get it hot. Anything that could be made in space without a lot of heat would be better. I think it does have to be made in space.
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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Leaving aside the issue of how this could be profitable, I don't see how this constitutes space exploration. You're just doing something in low earth orbit, which is pretty routine.

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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by InvisibleBison View Post
    Leaving aside the issue of how this could be profitable, I don't see how this constitutes space exploration. You're just doing something in low earth orbit, which is pretty routine.
    I think maybe halfeye's idea is that if you do enough of this sort of stuff and make it profitable, you can start piggybacking less profitable onto the same infrastructure. That is of course predicated on having enough millionaires to support such an industry.

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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by InvisibleBison View Post
    Leaving aside the issue of how this could be profitable, I don't see how this constitutes space exploration. You're just doing something in low earth orbit, which is pretty routine.
    Gotta agree with this.

    And how does this make space exploration profitable? Even if you do "it" on the ISS, you still have to pay the money to get the "ingredients" up "there". And even if you do it with multiple products, you might be able to make a few hundred millions. But that is not even a drop in the bucket of what's needed for meaningful space exploration. Heck, say you do a bunch of these ventures and make $100 million per year, that still only pays for 1 launch per year.

    Space exploration will never be profitable until the commercialization of extra-planetary resources is engaged in. i.e. mining. And then more elaborate commerce systems will only make sense when their are people to service in non-Terran locations. i.e. when there are already other colonies.

    I'm all for space exploration. Its the ONLY way human civilization shall survive, but it will not initially be funded by commercialization. Huge amounts of money will have to be spent by non-commercial entities before commercialization on any significant scale will be feasible.

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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    From what I gather, pretty much anything is going to be long term, maybe even VERY long term profitable at best. The sheer cost of getting everything you need into space alone is going to magnify startup costs to an absurd level. Lets say, for the sake of argument, asteroid mining turns out to be 75% more productive than identical mining on earth. You still have to account for the initial cost of starting the operation along with whatever upkeep is required for such a venture before you can even consider turning a profit on it. Also, of course, bringing the material mined to market. So unless you are willing to wait possibly decades to start seeing profit come in, while investing probably more money than most nations HAVE, we need to find something that can only be done in space that is hugely important before space based economy happens outside of novelty nonsense.

    That being said, if someone DOES go crazy enough to invest hundreds of billions into starting space based operations, then future groups could potentially use that starting point themselves for less startup cost, which would reduce the time till you see a return on investment from absurd to impractical.
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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails View Post
    And how does this make space exploration profitable? Even if you do "it" on the ISS, you still have to pay the money to get the "ingredients" up "there". And even if you do it with multiple products, you might be able to make a few hundred millions. But that is not even a drop in the bucket of what's needed for meaningful space exploration. Heck, say you do a bunch of these ventures and make $100 million per year, that still only pays for 1 launch per year.
    The point is to make a profit. You may only pay for one launch a year, but that's a launch that is free for everyone else flying on it.

    Space exploration will never be profitable until the commercialization of extra-planetary resources is engaged in. i.e. mining. And then more elaborate commerce systems will only make sense when their are people to service in non-Terran locations. i.e. when there are already other colonies.
    We've got all of the rare earths on Earth. There is no way bringing them down from space will ever be profitable. If anything stops being rare, the price goes down.

    I'm all for space exploration. Its the ONLY way human civilization shall survive, but it will not initially be funded by commercialization. Huge amounts of money will have to be spent by non-commercial entities before commercialization on any significant scale will be feasible.
    Why would that be a necessary truth? I don't think that is a necessary truth. I'm in favour the human colonisation of space too.
    The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.

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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    The point is to make a profit. You may only pay for one launch a year, but that's a launch that is free for everyone else flying on it.



    We've got all of the rare earths on Earth. There is no way bringing them down from space will ever be profitable. If anything stops being rare, the price goes down.



    Why would that be a necessary truth? I don't think that is a necessary truth. I'm in favour the human colonisation of space too.
    Theoretically there will come a time when we run out of needed materials to do things, similar to the whole projected time where we run out of oil that keeps getting shoved back another 20 years every time new tech is developed so we can get more. There is also the "all our eggs in one basket" theory that works something like, If another planet killer asteroid heads for earth and bruce willis is too old to go punch it into dust, we might lose this as a habitable world for quite some time and settlements on other worlds, moons, space faring colonies, might be the only way our race survives. If we dont already have them, we are likely dead as a species or close to it. And, you know, assuming our species still exists in roughly 4 billion years we are going to have to move. What with the sun eating our planet and all. Less ridiculous, there is also the possibility that we will irreparably wreck this world and having some place else to go would be handy when this world can no longer support life because we didnt recycle enough gluten. Gotta keep our carb footprint low, you know?
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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    The point is to make a profit. You may only pay for one launch a year, but that's a launch that is free for everyone else flying on it.
    Yep, and businesses that are interested in making a profit insist on a return on investment commencement with the risk. And if you don't believe folks like me and Traab saying we don't see it as a reasonable endeavor, then ask yourself why folks like Rutan, Musk et al haven't gone through with such? They have the money, they have the technological companies to do what you are proposing, they have the interest in space exploration, and they consider "out-of-the-box" ideas. Yet not one of them have ever proposed such a thing.

    Heck, Musk even sent a $200,000 car into space because he had nothing better to put there. If launching a toffee machine into space for free and returning the toffee to space (or any other type of self-funding idea) was reasonable, why would he waste $200k rather than invest something he could have turned a profit with?

    We've got all of the rare earths on Earth. There is no way bringing them down from space will ever be profitable. If anything stops being rare, the price goes down.
    Yes, agreed. But not sure how that is related to my statement you were quoting.

    Why would that be a necessary truth? I don't think that is a necessary truth. I'm in favour the human colonisation of space too.
    That space exploration will not be initiated by commercial endeavors? Because businesses are all about maximizing financial profit and minimizing risk. Currently space exploration has a high risk and very little prospect for profit, therefore businesses won't do it.

    Even Musk isn't just throwing his money into a purely commercial venture. Yes he sees future potential. But he also is spending a great deal of money he has made elsewhere for altruistic reasons. And he is limiting his commercial risk by trying to build a space launch system that competes for current SLS customers, i.e. US government and communication satellites.

    Have you watched the recent "Mars" series from PBS/National Geographic? It's on Netflix and other places. It talks about colonization and exploration and the commercialization. It has interviews with Musk and other experts. It will give you a bunch of information and opinions that I think you will really appreciate.

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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Musk could have made money by selling that lift space to someone with a satellite. He sent the car as a publicity stunt on a grand scale, and it worked phenomenally.

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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails View Post
    commencement
    Commensurate?

    And if you don't believe folks like me and Traab saying we don't see it as a reasonable endeavor, then ask yourself why folks like Rutan, Musk et al haven't gone through with such? They have the money, they have the technological companies to do what you are proposing, they have the interest in space exploration, and they consider "out-of-the-box" ideas. Yet not one of them have ever proposed such a thing.
    They don't have access to the ISS or anything like it.

    Yes, agreed. But not sure how that is related to my statement you were quoting.
    The early part about space mining being profitable.

    That space exploration will not be initiated by commercial endeavors? Because businesses are all about maximizing financial profit and minimizing risk. Currently space exploration has a high risk and very little prospect for profit, therefore businesses won't do it.

    Even Musk isn't just throwing his money into a purely commercial venture. Yes he sees future potential. But he also is spending a great deal of money he has made elsewhere for altruistic reasons. And he is limiting his commercial risk by trying to build a space launch system that competes for current SLS customers, i.e. US government and communication satellites.
    There is very little profit without some risk. There are a lot of people who want people in space, Musk and Carmack for two.

    Have you watched the recent "Mars" series from PBS/National Geographic? It's on Netflix and other places. It talks about colonization and exploration and the commercialization. It has interviews with Musk and other experts. It will give you a bunch of information and opinions that I think you will really appreciate.
    No, I don't rate Mars as a sensible destination.
    Last edited by halfeye; 2019-02-10 at 10:24 AM.
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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    They don't have access to the ISS or anything like it.
    Yet somehow that's the suggested location for toffee making?

    There is very little profit without some risk. There are a lot of people who want people in space, Musk and Carmack for two.
    And they are doing so for altruistic reasons, not commercial. Sure, they are investing loads of money in it in something of a commercial sense, but they are doing so not for commercial reasons, but for altruistic reasons. (Thankfully)

    No, I don't rate Mars as a sensible destination.
    What? That's not why I recommended the show. I recommended the show because it uses Mars as a discussion platform for commercial exploration of space. (As well as social and technological discussions and others). Many of the interviews and corresponding plot lines are about Mars, they are about how commercial, scientific, and other interests will clash and how they might be resolved or the problems competing interests might cause.

    In other words, they have thoughtful, intelligent and informed discussions among real-world experts on the topics that are brought up in this thread.

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    Default Re: How to make space exploration profitable.

    At this point for space to ever be profitable somebody is going to have to bite the bullet, take the MASSIVE hit to their finances for little return, and go ahead and create some sort of space based operation that can be expanded upon by future endeavors. That person will never see a dime of profit, but will at least be in the history books as the person/corporation/nation that went ahead and did it anyways. From that point on it might actually become profitable to do things in space because the initial expenditure has been done. Does the moon have mineral deposits that can be mined? More importantly, do they have the resources needed to expand without importing more stuff from earth? If the answer is yes, then profit can happen as well as advancement in space travel. If we still need to keep shuttling (hur hur) resources up to the moon to build on from there its still going to be shaky as heck that it might ever be able to turn a profit. The goal would be space based independence. Being in space would straight away gut large portions of the cost for every launch we go through on earth. Whether its the moon, or a much larger space station, further space trips starting from there will be far easier and cheaper from then on.

    Only other option is the next great tech breakthrough. A paradigm shift on par with going from vacuum tubes to transistors. A quantum leap forward in potential that somehow makes leaving earths orbit far easier cheaper and safer. A source of propulsion thats far more compact, long lasting, and efficient, the creation of portal guns capable of engulfing a space ship, i dunno, SOMETHING
    "Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nerd-o-rama View Post
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