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[Egan_BW]

I hope that he goes for a space walk without a suit, just to see what would happen.

[Trekkin]

Compare this to the history of air travel; first, it's an extravagant luxury for the rich and/or of industrial and military interest, and over time, costs fall and accessibility rises, till today where most people in the first world (I would say nearly all) could fly on a plane at least once in their lives if they really wanted to.

Or don't, because quite unlike air travel there's nowhere to go. Everything it is profitable to do in space at scales that actually drive costs down can be done more cheaply, safely, and most importantly less massively by robots.

[sluissa]

Compare this to the history of air travel; first, it's an extravagant luxury for the rich and/or of industrial and military interest, and over time, costs fall and accessibility rises, till today where most people in the first world (I would say nearly all) could fly on a plane at least once in their lives if they really wanted to.

Or don't, because quite unlike air travel there's nowhere to go. Everything it is profitable to do in space at scales that actually drive costs down can be done more cheaply, safely, and most importantly less massively by robots.

What's the point in going on a vacation, to see the grand canyon, niagara falls, yellowstone park? I mean, there's plenty of pictures taken of them already. I can just look at those much more cheaply.

[Trekkin]

Compare this to the history of air travel; first, it's an extravagant luxury for the rich and/or of industrial and military interest, and over time, costs fall and accessibility rises, till today where most people in the first world (I would say nearly all) could fly on a plane at least once in their lives if they really wanted to.

Or don't, because quite unlike air travel there's nowhere to go. Everything it is profitable to do in space at scales that actually drive costs down can be done more cheaply, safely, and most importantly less massively by robots.

What's the point in going on a vacation, to see the grand canyon, niagara falls, yellowstone park? I mean, there's plenty of pictures taken of them already. I can just look at those much more cheaply.

Well, if you've got a way to power a rocket with sarcasm and starry-eyed wishes, that's a different story.

[RadtheCad]

Compare this to the history of air travel; first, it's an extravagant luxury for the rich and/or of industrial and military interest, and over time, costs fall and accessibility rises, till today where most people in the first world (I would say nearly all) could fly on a plane at least once in their lives if they really wanted to.

Or don't, because quite unlike air travel there's nowhere to go. Everything it is profitable to do in space at scales that actually drive costs down can be done more cheaply, safely, and most importantly less massively by robots.

There is somewhere to go:  on a cruise around the moon.  One guy's already been willing and able to pay for it.
Assuming a growing space-based economy (satellites, etc.), even if all or nearly all the industrial activity is performed by machines (likely), launch costs are launch costs.
If they drop, so will the cost of chartering an abnormal hardware delivery on an abnormal trajectory.  Even if meatmen never do any important work in space, and never live there in any significant numbers, you'd expect to see more space tourism as launch costs drop:  there's plenty of people who would pay some percent of their net worth for a trip around the moon.
Of course, human-rated launch systems will be more expensive than robot-rated.  But people launching satellites and robots have an incentive to minimise explosions too, all else being equal:  even if human spaceflight lagged behind the more experimental, but efficient methods by a generation, you'd expect to see the above trend in the longer run, for as long as physical humans are still around and running things.  Not that I think we're going away any time soon- but I don't know how long the above timescales are.  Maybe AI will take over before much space tourism happens.

[Trekkin]

It's not just ratings. It's the entire life support system and attendant shielding and heat load. Not only is there no reason to build and test these for automated spacecraft, there's also zero incentive to build the capability to carry them -- of which the added mass is arguably the simplest component to handle of many -- into the hardware launching them.

In a sense, the cost of spaceflight is so high because it's presently necessary that every flight be entirely self-supporting; we need rockets that can reach space from a stationary pad and carry everything required along with them because it's not profitable to leave anything up there for their use. That need not be true of robotic spaceflight for scientific and industrial purposes, but the things rich idiots need to take joyrides and publicity stunts are different, and therefore become economical to supply on an ongoing basis and attendant lower per-flight cost only if there are enough rich idiots to make them so. Air travel at least had the benefit of being uniquely useful for shipping to people in otherwise inaccessible locations and needing a human in every plane and therefore every plane capable of carrying humans. Space travel has neither those uses nor those restrictions.

[scourge728]

Colonization

[Trekkin]

Colonization

Where of, and paid for by who and for what reason?

[scourge728]

Mars, other solar systems, the moon, etc. Paid for by government organizations, Science, overpopulation, preventing us from being wiped out if our planet is destroyed, probably other reasons

[wierd]

1) Moon
2) Kickstarter (et al)
3) Political dissidence


Or, if climate change continues unabated because "But muh fortunes and muh business models!"...

1) Moon
2) Private fortunes
3) To not have weekly cat4 hurricanes/angry mobs at your luxury home

[smjjames]

Colonization

Where of, and paid for by who and for what reason?

Science? Really though, it doesn't matter once human colonization becomes practical and not every colony is about relieving population pressures. Hell, some of the early colonies in the US (Jamestown is the main one I'm thinking of, but there are certainly others) were about accquiring resources and there are loads of cities that had their start as a trading post or mining or whatever. I'd expect the same to be true of any future space colonies.

Obviously colonizing space is a hell of a lot different from setting up a trade post on the Hudson, but the same proccesses are going to be there. People bring their families, entrepreneurs come, and so on.

[GiglameshDespair]

It's not just ratings. It's the entire life support system and attendant shielding and heat load. Not only is there no reason to build and test these for automated spacecraft, there's also zero incentive to build the capability to carry them -- of which the added mass is arguably the simplest component to handle of many -- into the hardware launching them.

In a sense, the cost of spaceflight is so high because it's presently necessary that every flight be entirely self-supporting; we need rockets that can reach space from a stationary pad and carry everything required along with them because it's not profitable to leave anything up there for their use. That need not be true of robotic spaceflight for scientific and industrial purposes, but the things rich idiots need to take joyrides and publicity stunts are different, and therefore become economical to supply on an ongoing basis and attendant lower per-flight cost only if there are enough rich idiots to make them so. Air travel at least had the benefit of being uniquely useful for shipping to people in otherwise inaccessible locations and needing a human in every plane and therefore every plane capable of carrying humans. Space travel has neither those uses nor those restrictions.

Unless you're saying we're never going to send people into space again and live entirely planetbound, with theoretical robots doing theoretically everything we might ever want to do, we're going to need to keep developing rockets that can transport people into orbit. I doubt spaceflight will ever be entirely human-free.

Both SpaceX and NASA have indicated plans to land people on mars and colonise, and SpaceX already have sharply driven down launch costs. They're only going to get lower.

[Telgin]

A small aside about overpopulation: barring some truly miraculous scientific advancements, space travel alone can't fix this.  A very quick googling implies the population is growing by about 80,000,000 people per year.  Just to keep the population stable, you'd thus have to export that many people per year.  It's hard to imagine the kind of launch capabilities we'd have to scale up to to provide that.

[Madman198237]

Space elevator/launch loop would take care of it.

Too bad those are beyond our capabilities right now, IIRC both require material qualities we don't have.

[wierd]

What trekkin is getting at:

There is nothing on the moon that is terrifically valuable that cannot be much less expensively obtained, processed, and used right here on earth. As such, there is no real ECONOMIC reason to go to the moon (other than its strategic locality for other space operations).

Because of that, WHY would people relocate their families, WHY would businesses go there, et al.


You have to think in those terms, not star-struck optimism.


I pointed out that "excess of wealthy privilege" for "that pristine scenic view" is totally a thing with those people with enough financial capital to make this happen, and that if climate change continues, the number of destroyed sea-side mansions is going to go very high indeed, as the seas turn from calm, scenic beauties into raging, frothing, and surging death under the influence of large temperature variances in the atmosphere.  (that, and all the dead animals washing ashore making it smell terrible.)

The moon has no weather to disrupt.  It is a brilliant grey-white desert, with a beautiful blue planet hanging overhead. (it is tidally locked with the earth, so that pretty blue orb stays in mostly the same place in the sky too)

Sure-- there's no air to breath, there is little effective gravity, and you need to produce food on site to make it a viable candidate, but then again, look at the veritable ARMIES of people that the wealthy and privileged kept and paid for in the late 1800s.   Same concept, modern incarnation.