🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1989Feb14.180253.18858@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:

>please name a date, or cite specific criteria that would indicate
>that the time is at hand.

Criteria:  A manned mission or base is desirable when  
1) It can return discoveries and/or resources, unrelated to further manned 
spaceflight, that are equivalent or better than what can be done by spending 
the same money on unmanned missions.
OR
2) It cannot quite meet criteria (1), but the costs are borne by the
mission promoters, not taxpayers or stockholders.

Time line: Very uncertain. Depends on the research we do *now*.  
(This is an optimistic scenario, based on the assumption that we spend  
the entire current NASA budget, $13 billion/year, on research and probes,
through the year 2000).
1990's: A $30 billion space station does not come close to what you can 
do with unmanned probes for $30 billion (return data from nearly every 
corner of the solar system, and distribute it to researchers and citizens
around the world).  Launch costs are far too expensive to be payed for
by anybody but taxpayers and stockholders.
2000-2010: Space manufacturing and initial mining,  like today's space
communications and remote sensing, will have to be automated
if it is to be priced low enough for Earth markets.  Tourism may provide
a commercial rationale for manned missions in LEO, if launch costs are
brought down far enough.  
2010-2020: Automated space mining and manufacturing will provide an 
infrastructure that makes manned forays into space much cheaper.  Tourism 
and limited on-site maintence of remote mining operations (mostly Mars,
asteroids, Galilean moons).  Space travelers will rely on air, fuel, water, 
food, shelter, etc. made by robots in space from space materials.
2020+  Due to the now massive, solar-system wide industrial infrastructure,
manned spaceflight becomes cheap enough for long-term stays and settlement.
Settlements occur for political or religious reasons more than economic.
In other words, criteria (2) above, financing carried out by the promoters
and not the public, is now economically viable, not due to return on 
investment, but due to the cost of investment being outweighed by political
or religious considerations.  

If we persist in spending our finite budgets on Man in Space Now, the scenario 
becomes much bleaker.  Important research on mining and manufacturing
operations, automation, and the space environment will go undone; most of 
the solar system's resources will remain undiscovered.  The result will
be that large-scale mining and manufacturing in the solar system are 
delayed by many decades, and with them, any manned presence beyond multi-
billion dollar romps by a few lucky individuals.

Nick Szabo              szabonj@fred.cs.washington.edu