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Einstiens equasion of E=MC^2 is the relationship between energy and inertia. If this was understood, we would have Gravity drive already and perhaps antigravity.
No it's not. It defines the relationship between energy and mass which is not the same thing as inertia. E=MC^2 is often called the mass-energy equivalence ratio. It is not susceptible to 'solutions' of the kind you appear to be peddling; there is nothing there to be 'solved'.
Perhaps you are confusing E=MC^2 with the somewhat similar-looking but strictly Newtonian equation, E=0.5MV^2, where--
E is kinetic energy, which is the energy a body has by virtue of both its mass and velocity.
M is mass, which is the amount of matter possessed by a body
V is velocity, which is rate of change of position, measured in terms of both speed and location.
Now E=0.5MV^2 can be solved, as V is not a fixed constant. But your gravity wheel perpetual motion machine is still doomed to sure and certain total failure. If you wonder why, go away and find out about the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Do not be so quick to assume that fusion fuels are harmless of themselves... it is not outside the realm of possibility to make a nuclear bomb with only fusion fuels. The military can get fairly close now by using conventional explosives to initiate the reaction, by the time we have need for an advanced rocket like this, then it might not be hard at all...
Using HE? For a bomb, perhaps, but as a means to propell a rocket...? I thought the main line of thinking there was to use lasers to compress a pellet to critical density and temperature, and so initiate fusion? The trouble with conventional explosive would be that, yes, you can create an implosion, but can you keep doing it several times a second over long periods in your blast chamber-cum-rocket exhaust? And you'd need to carry quite a mass of HE, while the laser system could be powered by the previous fusion 'burst'.
The laser route is much 'sweeter' engineering, is it not?
Wooow this is getting down right psychodelic, I can feel the colors...
That's strange, I can hear them. What have you been smoking?
...the speed of light is always the same everywhere...
To be pedantic, the velocity of light in a vacuum is the same everywhere.
Of course it may travel a little slower in a light sabre.
May the Force be with you.
Actually I'd like the end product to launch at *less* than £500/kg. Of if $2B-$5B could get us that I'd prefer to spend $10B and get down to $300-400/kg.
A bad idea. The trade-off does not sound worthwhile. About $100/kg less for spending an extra $5 to $8bn up front breaks even at 50,000 to 80,000 tons of payload. Add in the cash-flow financing cost and you are certainly looking at a breakeven point of somewhere over (possibly well over) 100,000 tons delivered to LEO. And you've delayed the project (and therefore return on capital) for several years into the bargain.
Cheap can come awfully expensive in this business.
But in any case, in principle a reduced price/kg can be got simply by scaling up the BDB. You start modest and make 'em bigger as confidence (and demand) grows. No need to sepnd extra billions and wait years.
A 500MW SPS could probably be built for $3-5B. It would be a neat trick if the company built this first and then never paid any electricity or heating/cooling bills again - ever! ;
Enegry is in essence free to any energy company in any case.
Then why do so many people persue it with great conviction...?
Heaven knows. But to give a measure of the idiocy of the whole business, consider the question...
Is 6 * 45^2 the minmum solution to E=MC^2?
... is actually entirely meaningless twaddle.
Einstein's equation defines the relationship between mass and energy. 'C' is the velocity of light in a vacuum, which is a constant. It does not vary, ever. '6*45^2' is a pure number, and so cannot be anthing to do with Einstein's equation, because in 'E=MC^2", 'M' is a mass and therefore has to be defined in grams, lbs, Kg, tons, or some such, and C is a constant (and well known) number of miles per second (approx 186,000 miles/sec), kilometers per second (approx 300,000 kilometers/sec), or equivalent. It sure ain't 45.
but why should this idea be dismissed as unworkable?
Because this so-called gravity wheel is a perpetual motion machine, which is about the oldest and stupidest self-delusional impossibility (for the inventor) known to science.
Personally I'd run it as a competition: company to win gets $40B cash...
I wouldn't, for two main reasons:
(1) Using BDBs, $500/kg could be got with a develop & build program of not $40 billion but about $2 to $5 billion-- there is no new technology needed!
(2) What matters to a large corporation like one of the oil majors when considering a large investment is not just the ultimate profit/loss or the total capital investment required but--crucially--the cash flow.
What this means is best illustrated by a (very simplified) example.
For example, a total investment of $50bn over 10 years which will begin generating income of $1bn in Year 3 rising to $5bn/year by Year 6 is a lot more interesting than another project that has a total investment of just $25bn over 10 years but only generates income of $5bn/year from Year 11. In the first example, the low-point in the cash-flow is $15bn in Year 5; in the second it is $25bn in year 10. When the financing cost of negative cash-flows are added in, the attractiveness of the first, superficially more expensive, project becomes yet more marked.
(I know something of which I speak, as I once used to work on exercises like this for Mobil Oil, before they merged to become ExxonMobil.)
This is why, properly organised, a SSPS project could be a much more attractive investment than something like the Channel Tunnel. The Channel Tunnel may be cheaper, but the cash flow is terrible. Not one penny will be earned until the whole thing is complete and you have spent all you are spending on building it. A SSTS scheme can start to earn money once the first significant part of the first satellite is ready and the means are at hand to transmit the power back to earth and there is a receiver ready to collect it.
I can't work out the costs in detail here of course--I don't have nearly enough information--but provided the company is not diverted into R&D, building and testing and then getting operational some fancy new launch system at the outer envelope of technology but instead settles for something that is almost old technolog, but will deliver quick returns at low cost (like BDB) SSPS has the makings of a good investment, cash-flow wise.
Indeed after a decade or two (or maybe less) the cash-flow will be so positive, it will be able to finance additional SSPSs out of current income.
Space will be self-financing at last!
One step at a time.
Doubtless. But do they have to be so slow, so timerous... and do we have to have at least one step back for every one forward? We landed on the moon in 1969--35 years ago, for heaven's sake! Nowadays the best we manage... occassionally, and far more expensively than back in 1969 ... is low earth orbit.
There is something more than unfortunate or sad about this. It is sick in the sense of 'ill' and that's just plain sickening.
If the military builds a fighter bomber that can fly to the moon...
And remember that the instument of most of this sickness, the Space Shuttle, was the result of NASA bending its design to fit the performance demands of the USAF--who in the end decided Shuttle was too unreliable for them. They at least got that bit right.
In the end, the only reliable motive to drive this or any other great enterprise is greed. Capitalism works, socialism does not. And let's face it, the US space program has been a socialist venture from day one. And see where its got us.
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I'm thinking of adopting the following as my motto:
Put not thy trust in Princes -- Psalms 146:3
In stand-alone business plans I've asumed it would take $40B to develop a system that could launch at costs less than $500/kg.
That's an awfully expensive way to achieve cheapness. I think I've said that before, and more than once.
Especially bearing in mind the huge chunks you'd have to orbit (I don't know if you envisage the SSPS's all coming up from earth, or fabricating the bulk of their mass on the moon, etc., but in either case, a lot will have to come up from the bottom of the gravity well) I would invite you to consider the delights of the Big Dumb Booster, for which this sort of project was made, you might say.
BDB development costs would not come close to $40 billion, but $500/kg to LEO should be just about achievable.
...and you need to spend a lot of money to break even.
True enough. Yet private money (not a penny of public) financed the Channel Tunnel, to the tune of about $25 billion+, and that was a good decade ago now. All right, the Channel Tunnel Company is loosing money hand over fist today, but the thing got built with private money.
And one difference from the Channel Tunnel is that SSPS's would start earning income as soon as the first stretch of the infrastructure was complete; it would not all be up-front money. Yes, I think it's possible as a non-government project. Especially if Big Oil woke up to the danger of having their money-flow (ME oil) cut off and realised the urgent need for an alternative.
Big Oil has the funds to do this thing.
£3M/10tons
The thing is able to lift 10,000lbs payload. That is 5 tons, not 10. So double your cost to $1.8 billion, just as I said.
Check you maths please, particularly if you're going to be condescending afterwards.
So, as I said, under $1000/kg.
$660/kg
And again, check your maths.
There must be a more convincing reason for manned orbital spaceflight than popping up to take in the view. There must be a reason that will convince the government, the military, or business, to pay for the venture.
On this we agree. One possible solution to this would be government built SPS systems.
Good. Although I don't think they need neccessarily be government built.
Even if you are right JimM, and the first spaceline is sued out of existence, then the R&D costs will get completely written off before the new owners get ahold of it...
Well, they say you can tell who were the pioneers by the arrows in their backs...
Or I'll qualify that slightly-- Space tourism will never be the driver for manned spaceflight. It will happen one fine day, but it will be as a spin-off from other applications of manned spaceflight--space solar power, for one example.
I respectfully, and humbily, think you are dead wrong. There is, and will only ever be, one reason for manned spaceflight. To put people up there. It is the end, the reason, the point.
What we are seeing with the suborbital push is to put people higher and farther up than ever before. People's desire is what drives this. Not for better cargo delivery.
(Sigh) And I thought you'd got it.
There must be a more convincing reason for manned orbital spaceflight than popping up to take in the view. There must be a reason that will convince the government, the military, or business, to pay for the venture.
Sooner rather than later, in order that the manned colonisation of space can really hapen, the whole space venture must be a net contributer to the govenment in the form of taxes. So long as it costs the government, it will never get anywhere, as we have seen over the last 30-odd years. Space needs, desperately needs, to break even.
Orbital space tourism as a stand-alone business is never going to break even. I think that's now clear. But in any case, tourists are not settlers or colonists. They'd be no more than gawkers, when all is said and done. And somehow I don't think governments will pay for even a part of that. Nor should they, I think.
Then what's the freaking point? You know the answer. We all know the answer. It dosen't work. It can't work. We're f*cking boxed in.
When faced with that kind of problem, the only solution is to quit, or to change the rules of the game. The solution does not exsist under the parameters you have laid down. Expecting to find one is being unrealistic.
It's taken you a while, but at last you've figured out what I was saying right back at the begining of this thread:
Orbital space tourism is a non-starter.
Or I'll qualify that slightly-- Space tourism will never be the driver for manned spaceflight. It will happen one fine day, but it will be as a spin-off from other applications of manned spaceflight--space solar power, for one example.
A second point, and the reason I don't want us to reach for the easy solution such as an X-prize, or a government subsady, or tax fiddle or whatever, is that there is absolutely no longterm future for space travel until it becomes self-financing--or to be more exact, until it can make a profit and pay taxes to the government instead of depending on government handouts of one sort or another for survival.
And anyway, can you really believe that the government would lay out serious money to subsidise joy-rides into space for billionaires? As you put it yourself, "We all know the answer. It dosen't work. It can't work. We're f*cking boxed in."
The first step towards making progress is to face reality.
Wouldn’t paying for an expensive lawyer decrease what you get in return?
They are expensive precisely because they significantly increase what you get in return. How else could they justify their fees?
BTW you sound pretty down on people with money.
Certainly not. Why should you say that? I'm just trying to be realistic--a scarse commodity among some of the denzines of this thread of late.
(a) federally subsidized insurance is acceptable if it creates new industries and provides a basis for new industry to become established. Long term, no. But sometimes you have to prime the pump. Or we can wait. Your choice.
Like an X-prize, this is a sort of "cheating". If we are trying to look at the costs of a standalone business, both this and the prize are market-distorters. Let's leave them aside for now
I was aware that the Warsaw Treaty $75,000 limit was history
Of course you were. That must have been why you waited until after I brought the subject up...
That's pathetic, even by your standards. Of course I didn't waste time bringing up a dead letter just to point out it was dead. It would be like ... say ... pointing out that prohibition would be a problem, but we don't have to worry now because it's been ended.
...at least I try and present proof and cite sources.
But you do it so badly and so incompletely, you would be seriously better off not bothering. Stop pretending to be a lawyer.
3000 tons into LEO for the cost of one shuttle trip?
Well, what can I say? I know Shuttle is expensive, but $1.8 billion per trip? Who's kidding who now?
Under $1000/kg?
$660/kg, actually. But of course then you have to add profit, insurance (on the vehicle itself, not the other things), ground handling facilites, etc. So maybe you could sell at about twice $660/kg....
However, we already know there is just no market worth discussing for cargo for this mass to LEO, which leaves us back at tourists. At three tourists per trip, that comes out at $(((10,000lb/3)/2.2kg)*1,320) = $1909090.90... , which I think we could reasonably round out to be $2 million per tourist. Then there is the intersting matter of insurance for the tourist, but we're already been discussing that at some length.
At one launch per week, do you think you can find 150 billionaires a year for 10 years (the MTBF life of the vehicle is 500 trips = 10 years) IOW a total of 1,500 billionaires prepared to fork up $2 billion plus insurance for this sort of trip? Especially when under your scheme for many vehicles, it would be in the face of fierce competition on all sides? (Addnl. costs for sales & marketing would become significant.)
Looks like the highroad to bankrupcy all round, to me.
No one would want one of those.
Not if they've done their sums, they wouldn't.
The rich already have enough money.
As I already quoted from The Great Gatsby, "The rich are different, they have more money."
And they have more money because they turn down no opportunity to gather yet more. You bet your sweet life they'll sue. And if having the most expensive lawyers means having the best lawyers and that has any bearing on the matter, they won't just win, they'll fleece you.
The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.
Now, if I recall, it seemed to be agreed that any flight units beyond the first three would be fairly cheap (in comparison to the first three production units). So, what i suggest is a 1 billion dollar prize for the first orbital SSTO that can take 10 tons LEO. Government and privately funded. This will help defer the cost of R&D, and act as the proving ground (exactly the model used by the X-prize and Scale Composites...you'll see)
Two observations:
One:
The minute you introduce X-type prizes into the cost estimate, you are sort of "cheating" in the sense that the object of the exercise is to figure out the economics of the thing as a stand-alone business. So, no prizes in this exercise, please, as they are a really serious distortion of the costs, leading you way up false trails.
Two:
What the numbers showed (the ones I imported from the other discussion and are available to read earlier in this thread if you care to look) is that even three units would not be financially viable. Even just one would have a really tough time breaking even. So the market for either more units, or for the sale of plans or patents or whatever, would basically be nil.
This point could be taken further, but I suspect (I've not worked it out in numerical detail) that if there were many more than three of these vehicles built at this stage in the development of the space business, you probably could not even give them away. Even at direct operation cost ($3million/trip) only, they would not have any customers. And in the process, they'd bankrupt the guys tring to make a go of the first three units, which would be carry the R&D, etc. costs, of course.
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I answered these points above because they were reasonable points reasonably made.
Earlier, I did not get in the least emotional, just pi**ed off with people asking the SAME moronic questions (in identical form, too) for the second or third time, as if it was MY fault that they were too stupid to read the answers the first time.
And the last time I wore a kilt I was aged 4, forced into it against my will, to attend someone's wedding.
The widow sues the carrier for failing to disclose that flying suborbital invalidates standard whole life policies.
Most life policies today have lists of exclusions for all sorts of dangerious activities (skiing, hang-gliding, etc.) This would presumably be another. But no-one in their senses who has dependents to leave behind would ski or hang-glide without taking out a separate policy to cover these activities. What we have here is the same situation writ large.
Insurance companies are the ultimate experts on safety. If they will sell you insurance at a reasonable price, its probably safe.
Yes, I agree. I certainly think sub-orbital trips will prove (relatively) easy to cover in the manner you describe.
I have also being trying to make the point that since it is virtually impossible to know what the actual outcome of a claim for damages would be, the only sane way to assess the cost at this point in the proceedings is to ask what the insurance cost of covering for it would be likely to be. What that needs is not the knowledge of a lawyer or legal precidents to call down by the score, but common-sense knowledge about how insurers assess risk and what they are likely to set premiums at.
The problem arises when we look at flights to LEO, where the ticket price goes up, probably by a factor or 20 to 50 over the suborbital price -- so we're looking at a market that can only be afforded, by and large(*), by billionaires or near-billionaires.They tend to have very much higher life cover.
(*) exceptions: competition winners and reporters. But there won't be anything like enough of them to sustain the business on its own.
The new Intercarrier Agreement modifying The Warsaw Convention theoretically exposes the airlines to unlimited liability. But the amount of damages for the plaintiffs is still dependent upon the laws applied by the country that has jurisdiction over the lawsuits.
Thank you Algol.
I was aware that the Warsaw Treaty $75,000 limit was history, which was why I did not mention it. So that takes us right back to where we were before ANTIcarrot introduced this particular red herring.
So after that trip round the houses the answers turn out, after all, to be:
!) In any circumstances where the passengers come to grief, be it fatally or no, plus any third party damages.
2) I refer you to my answer to 3, but in principle it could be infinity.
3) I am not a lawyer and don't intend to pretend I am one, unlike some other people.
...which is pretty much back were these questions came in.
(ANTIcarrot, on the basis of this example demonstration of your forensic skills you'd get slaughtered in a courtroom.)
So clark got some "Fair and Balanced" answers, too.
I am not responsible for the ignorance or stupidity of my questioner. I will not waste my time or that of others answering questions already answered clearly and directly on several previous occassions.
Considering the codswallop he was writing--again! my answers were no less 'fair and balanced' than he deserved.
I mean, what is this stuff?
(I assume that when you say here "beyond your opinion" you really mean "beyond your competence".)
A necessary question, as "beyond your opinion" is a meaningless expression in the English language--as you presumably know if you speak English.
Don't take it personally, man.
Oh I don't, I don't. It's just, as I said, that I don't suffer fools gladly. I've got better things to do with my time than to waste it answering idiotic questions from ...well... idiots.
I had thought it was possible to have a serious debate here, but it seems I was wrong. Which is sad... not so much for me as for this board. I have some ideas I'd like to knock about and get reactions to, but clearly that will have to happen elsewhere now.
BTW, if you want to look at this in Fox News versus BBC terms, just remember that the job of the TV reporter is to ask the questions, not supply the answers. Answers are the consquence of questions, not the other way round.
So if you think this thread has become more like Fox than BBC, don't blame me but ANTIcarrot, clark and your good self.
ANTIcarrot, I think he gave some Fox News "Fair and Balanced" answers instead of the BBC answers you wanted.
Well, your psychic powers are working overtime today, seeing how your post appeared before my response to ANTIcarrot.
1) What circumstances do you believe a theoretical spaceline would have to pay out compensation?
2) What amount do you believe would be legally reasonable?
3) What makes you think this beyond your opinion?
(I assume that when you say here "beyond your opinion" you really mean "beyond your competence".)
To answer 1) : In any circumstances where the passengers come to grief, be it fatally or not.
To answer 2) : I refer you to my answer to 3).
To answer 3) : I am not a lawyer.
My answer to 3) is my reason for basing my cost estimate of what all this might come to--in particular what allowance has to be made for this risk when calculating the cost of operating the vehicle--in the form of an estimated size of the insurance premium that would have to be paid.
Thus the very question you claim I have not answered was the direct reason for introducing the extract from the other study into this thread--to illustrate how the premium might be calculated.
Now it is true (as you proposed) that part or all of the cost of the passenger or cargo insurance permium cost might be eliminated by passing the risk back from the vehicle operator to the passengers themselves or the owners of the cargo. However, in principle the passenger or cargo owner would have to pay what would be essentially the same premium, and so the actual cost to the customer of using the vehilce would not change. And it is the actual (total) cost to the customer that I am saying prices orbital tourism out of business-- at least on this sort of basis, for the time being.
BTW, there is another risk that would have to be covered and does not seem to have been considered so far: third party liability.
Apart from the obvious 3rd party risk, like crashing down onto a cow in the middle of a mid-western field, there's also the more spectacular possibility of charging into the $100 billion ISS and destroying it... I just thought it might be worth mentioning...
Ah, I see. So nothing here is wedded in reality? We can send up 10,000 pounds- the basic premise, and from there, we start this flight of fancy. So each person is allotted 2500 lbs each, even if they don't need that much? What if they need more?
I see your questions are not becoming any less dumb. How the blazes are we supposed to know if the passengers are fat or thin, male or female, adult or child ... the only way to do this is to estimate the needs for an 'average' adult. Any more would be spectacularly stupid for this sort of a paper study. Maybe you're daft enough to try but I'm not.
My real point here is this (as in capacity) is an unknown, made more so by your due diligence to not use any kind of exsisting orbital vehicle as a baseline.
(Career advice: never take a job that involves any sort of estimating. You have not got a clue.)
I never said I was using any existing vehicle as a baseline. That is a complete red herring you have dragged out of some fetted corner of your seriously addled excuse for a brain.
Not on trial? Then why are you grandstanding?
Not so--I actually don't give a damn what other people think. Never have, never will.
It's just that I find it difficult to suffer fools gladly and you're coming over here as a 100% Grade-A fool, so you're learning what I actually think of what you have to say. I don't care if others are reading what I say to you or not.
Another study? I thought this was from another discussion on another internet forumn
If you'd bothered to read all I have said, you'd have gathered long ago that this was lifted from a PRIVATE discussion or study on the net. Period.
Ah, and that 3 million comes from where?
So now you reach new depths of dumbness. This question of yours followed immediately on from my telling you...
A $3 million running cost was a stated given.
How often do things have to be repeated to you before they go in? Do they ever?
Just more stupid questions I suppose
You said it.
I already said this: 2,500 lbs.
Based on what?
If you'd been following this up to now, you'd know the payload allowance (including for people) was 10,000lb. One pilot+3 passengers = 4 people. 10,000 divided by 4 = 2,500lbs.
Most of the rest of your questions are equally stupid.
I am not beholden to you or anyone else to answer them as if I was facing a court of law on trial for my life. You are making me regret I introduced information from another study to illustrate a point about insurance. You are demonstrating a degree of unobservance of what has already been said which beggars belief. For instance,
But while we're taliking of made-up numbers, what about this "overhead of $600,000 per flight" that I've never heard of before?
The difference between my calculations and yours- you guesstimate 3 million. I figured 2.4 million. The difference would be your confusion.
No, the difference would be your confusion.
A $3 million running cost was a stated given. $2.4 million was my estimate of the development cost that would be allocated to each flight, plus financing etc. (before insurance.) so the cost per flight (before insurance) was ($3+$2.4)million = $5.4million.
I do not have the time or inclination to answer any more of your stupidities.
The assumption is that borrowed capital is paid off in 10 years.
It's an assumption you didn't share. So if we have ten years here, I'm pretty certain we can take some tax ride offs here, no? Depreciation of assests?
There are a lot of assumption about this model I have not 'shared'. It was used on another forum, and it has a long history I've not got time to go into now.
As for tax write-offs, if the operation was based in Sumatra (say), what tax?
You're ignoring the incremental operating costs, stated to be $3 million. Otherwise, we're in agreement so far.
I'm ignoring made up numbers. Justify the overhead of $600,000 per flight, then we can talk.
If we ignore all made up numbers, there is nothing left. Nada. Nix. This whole exercise consists of nothing but made up numbers.
But while we're taliking of made-up numbers, what about this "overhead of $600,000 per flight" that I've never heard of before?
Who said we need a pilot? Where is that a requirement?
Can you imagine two or three billionaires, struggling to get into their spacesuits or whatever, and NO CREW on hand to help? NO PILOT to fly the thing, even if the computer could do the job in theory. After all, a 747 does not require a crew, on the same basis, but I've not noticed many actually flying around with a load of passengers but no crew. Have you?
What we base estimates on are Soyuz, right? Well Soyus is a different beast- it needs to stay on orbit for 90 days. Chuck that. It needs to have all these other requirements related to that. Chuck it. Strip it down to a bare minimum. It can fit 3 people now, but the Clipper is slated for 6.
Change the requirement for SSTO to TSTO with recoverable rocket. It reduces overhead, and will probably be easier to.
Now you are wanting to redesign the vehicle from first principles. I'm not going to go down that endless, and endlessly forking, road. And no, we don't base estimates on Soyuz.
What is the tonnage requirement per person? I don't know, but would love to hear if you have an answer.
I already said this: 2,500 lbs.