Are there commerical/industrial possibilities (other than tourism) in space travel?

Great Debates
21

Really, the cable is the only significant thing we don’t have yet. There are other problems, too, of course, but once we have the material for the cable, everything else will quickly fall into place. And the great thing about the cable is that carbon nanofiber would be an incredibly useful material for many purposes, on Earth and in space. Even if nobody’s trying for a space elevator, they’ll still work on producing nanofiber for suspension bridges and skyscrapers (and fishing lines and golf clubs, of course).

At the moment, the only direct commercial values in space flight are satellites, which can provide a variety of commercial (and non-commercial) benefits. Zero-g crystallography gets a lot of hype, but for now, it’s mostly just hype. But if we really got an industrial presence up and running in space, there’s a lot we could do. A space elevator or other cheap launch system would help a lot, of course, but even without cheap launches, I could envision asteroid mining, for instance, being profitable in the long term. Once the infrastructure is in place, you could keep it all in orbit, and just bring an asteroid on a controlled re-entry every so often, for a cheap supply of iron, nickel, and other metals. Remember, no matter how expensive it is to get things up there, it’s almost free to get them down.

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[QUOTE=Chronos]
Remember, no matter how expensive it is to get things up there, it’s almost free to get them down.
[/QUOTE]

As RAH well knew. :wink:

Which raises another point: There was a time when we might have hoped commercial exploitation in space could be piggybacked on military space travel – who controls the sky controls the surface, and if the military program included manned orbital platforms, they might need a lot of independent contractors for entertainment, just to start with . . .

But the Cold War is over, and our perceived enemies of the moment are not likely to have any space-travel capacity in our lifetimes.

23

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
I’ve often read stories where SF writers allude to “vacuum industries” – industrial processes that can be done optimally only in a zero-g and/or hard-vacuum environment – but I’ve never been clear on what these might be.

Any other possibilities?
[/QUOTE]

Per a NASA paper,
here, bottom paragraph, “the electrolytic growth of powders for catalyst applications.”

Actually, Space Island Group has a bunch of ideas. New/stronger alloys, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals (more pure)…

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[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Or maybe not . . . according to [total cost of building a space elevator according to the design of Dr. Bradley Edwards is estimated at $40 billion – and would be expected to reduce payload costs from $20,000 to $220 per kilogram. (This does not include maintenance and operating costs.) For comparison, NASA’s 2005 budget was $16 billion. The idea is not out of reach if government does it.

Why can’t W make his promises about a space elevator instead of a trip to Mars?
[/QUOTE]

[url=http://news.com.com/NASA+hosting+space+elevator+competition/2100-11397_3-5907569.html]NASA Hosting Space Elevator Competition](]this,[/url)

Small potatoes, but at least NASA is showing an interest.

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Plus there is always the null-G sex industry. Blind folded pin the tail on the, er…well, whatever you want to pin the tail on I guess. Could be big (cough cough)!

:stuck_out_tongue:

-XT

26

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
But the Cold War is over, and our perceived enemies of the moment are not likely to have any space-travel capacity in our lifetimes.
[/QUOTE]
Surely you’re not suggesting that Iran might not ‘bust a nuke’ above the atmosphere and blow our space assets to hell with EMP?

Report of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization

From which: Rumsfeld Commission Warns Against “Space Pearl Harbor”

Those are back in 2001. Here’s some current thoughts on the subject:
Ten Propositions Regarding Space Power
The Dawn of a Space Force

We very well may have a large contingent of space-hookers, or ‘independent contractors’ as you call them, by 2025.

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[QUOTE=xtisme]
Plus there is always the null-G sex industry. Blind folded pin the tail on the, er…well, whatever you want to pin the tail on I guess. Could be big (cough cough)!

:stuck_out_tongue:

-XT
[/QUOTE]

I recall a filksong – “A Reconsideration of Anatomical Docking Maneuvers in a Zero-Gravity Environment,” by Diana Gallagher – about the [ahem] technical challenges. Solutions suggested included:

Together tethers would prevent a random wandering
Magnetic harnesses incorporating alternating poles . . .

Can’t find the complete lyrics online, but I did find the lyrics to this one.

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On the same topic, see here.

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[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
:confused: To propel what? And what would be the requirements of such a system?
[/QUOTE]

You’re kidding, surely? Whaddya gonna do, climb up the rope?

We’re not talking about a 62-mile climb; it’s a 62,000 mile climb. You do need some sort of engine to get you up there, and unless you want it to be a remarkably long trip, it has to be reasonably fast.

It’s simply a project of staggering potential cost that would require the commitment of a fairly noticeable fraction of the world’s resources. Christ, the space station alone that holds the other end of the tether could cost a trillion dollars. The insanity of a $40 billion price tag can be quickly illustrated by pointing out that the International Space Station, which is about one hundredth as technologically challenging and complicated to build, cost at least $30 billion.

30

[QUOTE=Squink]
We very well may have a large contingent of space-hookers, or ‘independent contractors’ as you call them, by 2025.
[/QUOTE]

I hope against hope the emergent slang term will be “sky hookers”! :slight_smile:

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[QUOTE=Squink]
Surely you’re not suggesting that Iran might not ‘bust a nuke’ above the atmosphere and blow our space assets to hell with EMP?
[/QUOTE]

I was thinking of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, etc. – guys who couldn’t tell a spaceship from a portrait of the Prophet. As for Iran, even if they ever do develop a nuke, do they have the capacity to get it out of the atmosphere?

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[QUOTE=RickJay]
You’re kidding, surely? Whaddya gonna do, climb up the rope?

We’re not talking about a 62-mile climb; it’s a 62,000 mile climb. You do need some sort of engine to get you up there, and unless you want it to be a remarkably long trip, it has to be reasonably fast.
[/QUOTE]

Various approaches to that are being considered. See here.

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[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
As for Iran, even if they ever do develop a nuke, do they have the capacity to get it out of the atmosphere?
[/QUOTE]
The Shahab-3 should manage.

34

[QUOTE=RickJay]
You’re kidding, surely? Whaddya gonna do, climb up the rope?

We’re not talking about a 62-mile climb; it’s a 62,000 mile climb. You do need some sort of engine to get you up there, and unless you want it to be a remarkably long trip, it has to be reasonably fast.

It’s simply a project of staggering potential cost that would require the commitment of a fairly noticeable fraction of the world’s resources. Christ, the space station alone that holds the other end of the tether could cost a trillion dollars. The insanity of a $40 billion price tag can be quickly illustrated by pointing out that the International Space Station, which is about one hundredth as technologically challenging and complicated to build, cost at least $30 billion.
[/QUOTE]

Arthur C Clarke wrote a SF novel around a space elevator.

It might be there that I picked up the idea that a long cable actually pulls itself up, something to do with negative centripetal force. There is also the way a yoyo works.

If we had the fibre technology, then the rest of the task could be comparatively low tech - a sort of bootstrap operation.

35

Lotsa people have, by now. Clarke’s Fountains of Paradise came out back in 1982 or so, at almost exactly the same time as Stanley Schmidt’s The Web Between the Worlds, to which Clarke wrote the introduction. He pointed out the incredible similarities, which he attributed mainly to the fact that they were both extrapolating from the same background. In Clarke’s story the fibers are defect-free carbon. In Schmidt, defect-free silicon. Both novels have “climbers” for the space elevators named “Spider”

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[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
Lotsa people have, by now. Clarke’s Fountains of Paradise came out back in 1982 or so, at almost exactly the same time as Stanley Schmidt’s The Web Between the Worlds, to which Clarke wrote the introduction. …
[/QUOTE]

Nitpick: Charles Sheffield wrote The Web Between Worlds, not Stanley Schmidt.

The two books are a Lovely “Time to Railroad” coincidence, though!

Now what I came to pick on:

[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
As I’ve read from him and from other sources, some of the advantages are:

1.) A far better vacuum than we can maintain on earth

…

[/QUOTE]

Nope, sorry, that’s wrong. Nearly as common a misconception as NASA inventing Tang (a “spin-off”), rather than just buying a bunch (“spin-in”).

From Wikipedia’s page on High vacuum

[QUOTE=wikipedia]
In Low Earth Orbit (about 300 km altitude) the atmospheric density is about 100 nPa, (10^-9 Torr,) still sufficient to produce significant drag on satellites.Most artificial satellites operate in this region, and they need to fire their engines every few days to maintain orbit.

Beyond planetary atmospheres, the pressure from photons and other particles from the sun become significant. Spacecraft can be buffeted by solar winds, but planets are too massive to be affected.
[/QUOTE]

On the same Wiki page, they compare pressure ranges of Outer Space to various “grades” of vacuum. Outer space ranges from merely “High” to “Extremely High” Vacuum. “High” vacuum is easily achieved in an undergraduate laboratory. If you keep things clean, you can approach Ultra High Vacuum in an undergraduate setting.

I worked with Ultra-High Vacuum systems for a time (better than High vacuum, not as good as Extremely High vacuum). What you want from a vacuum system is a controlled, extremely clean environment. Just “opening up the window” on a spacecraft will NOT do. Spacecraft outgass all kinds of miscellany. If you want an atomically clean surface you don’t want crap outgassing on it. At 10^-6 torr (middle of the “high vacuum” range), a single layer of contaminants forms on a surface in about a second. At 10^-9 torr (UHV), that would be about 1,000 seconds = 17 minutes. Doesn’t give you a lot of time for surface processing or analysis.

UHV systems are not terribly cheap, since they require stainless steel construction, high-quality welds, multiple pumps, and scrupulous cleaning. But they are much cheaper than anything in orbit.

That’s the big hang-up with space industries, IMNSHO. It is prohibitively expensive to put stuff in space. Bob Park, skeptic extrordinaire, said that if we filled the space shuttle with coal dust at launch, and - just by it going into orbit - it returned full of diamonds, that would still not pay for the cost of the shuttle mission. I have no cite, and I have not run the numbers myself, so he could be wrong. But I am confident he’s closer to being right than space advocates would like.

37

Typo – Having worked with vacuum systems myself, I gotta say that the advantages of a huge, almost maintenance-free vacuum system speak for themselves. I’d no more just stick my vacuum thing outside an outgassing spaceship that put it near a plastic window in a vacuum on earth. But in a low-outgassing box in space I’d have a low-vacuum area that wouldn’t require a series of pump or cold traps. Heck, put it on the dark side of something and you have a built-in cold trap. If you already have you stuff in space, having mined it there, you have a good incentive for using space as your vacuum.

38

The cutting edge of Space Elevator optimism is here in Washington State. LiftPort Group is aiming at having the thing done by 2018 for roughly 6-10 billion dollars US. I’m wishing them well.

They say their progress in developing the tech to form the ribbon is actually a little ahead of the schedule they expected to achieve, but the power-beaming tech they’ll need to power the lifters is a bit behind.

39

[QUOTE=Saltire]
They say their progress in developing the tech to form the ribbon is actually a little ahead of the schedule they expected to achieve, but the power-beaming tech they’ll need to power the lifters is a bit behind.
[/QUOTE]

Why is “power-beaming” necessary? Why not use (non-load-bearing) power cables, strung along the main elevator cable?

40

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Why is “power-beaming” necessary? Why not use (non-load-bearing) power cables, strung along the main elevator cable?
[/QUOTE]

A 62,000 mile long power cable? You’d lose a massive amount of power along the way; that’s orders of magnitude longer than any power line used today. How’re you going to reduce power loss?