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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #167

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 167

Today's Topics:
          Fractions (was Re: SPACE Digest V13 #124)
             Landsat-5 Update - 02/07/91
            Space Industry Business Plans
                  GIF Format
              Re: SPACE Digest V13 #124
              Re: Solar Impact Mission.

Administrivia:

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----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 16 Feb 91 22:09:26 GMT
From: borg!vivaldi![e-mail]  (Jonathan Leech)
Subject: Fractions (was Re: SPACE Digest V13 #124)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:
>Coincidentally enough, the typical communications satellite also costs
>1/10 of 1% of our GNP, and pays for itself.  The smaller space probes

    Comsats cost $3 billion? This is news to me.
--
    Jon Leech ([e-mail])    __@/
    ``I propose that our universe is the most interesting of all possible
      universes, and our fate as human beings is to make it so.''
      - Freeman Dyson, _Infinite in All Directions_

------------------------------

Date: 7 Feb 91 16:25:27 GMT
From: att!linac!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Ron Baalke)
Subject: Landsat-5 Update - 02/07/91


                            LANDSAT-5 STATUS REPORT
                                February 7, 1991

     The Goddard Space Flight Center reported that the Landsat-5 satellite
went into a state of emergency yesterday, due to an onboard command table
anomaly.  The emergency was lifted by the project at midnight (PST) last
night.
      ___    _____     ___
     /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|      Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
     | | | |  __ \ /| | | |      Jet Propulsion Lab |
  ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |___   M/S 301-355        | It's 10PM, do you know
 /___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /|  Pasadena, CA 91109 | where your spacecraft is?
 |_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                      | We do!

------------------------------

Date: 15 Feb 91 10:24:55 GMT
From: zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!sequent!crg5![e-mail]  (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Space Industry Business Plans

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>Nick Szabo Writes:
>
>>I challenge anybody on the net to present a business plan -- the market
>>plan, R&D plan, projected financing and cash flows will suffice -- for
>>any one of the following:
>
>>* space station
>>* lunar base
>>* Martian base
>
>>using current launch costs, historical R&D costs for manned
>>space capsules, space-qualified machinery, etc.   Fact is, nobody
>>on this net or anywhere else on this planet can present a sound
>>business plan that is within even two orders of magnitude in cost
>>to being profitable.


>
>Person:     Gerald K. O'neill , of, I think, Princeton U.
>Reference:  HIGH FRONTIER
>
>Fact is, this guy came up woth a plan for SPS, involving a mass-driver on the
>moon, solar powered metal-processing in earth-orbit, and habitation colonies
>on the order of km's in size, to create a infrastructure that basically would
>provide electricity for the entire planet.  (Or would make our civilization
>autotrophic instead of heterotrophic, if you believe in gaia)
>
>He completely ignored tourism,metals,information, and science possibilities.
>
>For an investment of 400 billion 1972 $, over twenty years, he had a return
>of 3 trillion at the end of that time (after debt service).
>
>In other words, if you assume 5% inflation, he would have made an investor of
>$100, after twenty years, $3500.  That's a return of 17% per year, far better
>than most business ventures.
>


_High Frontier_ IMHO is one of the most valuable, thought-provoking
books ever written.  It is a damned good physicist's speculation,
but not a serious engineering R&D or business plan.  Note that the
business O'Neill actually went into (navigation satellites) is much more
contemporary and appropriate in scale.

Every category I specified (financing plan, cash flow projections,
R&D plan, marketing plan) has large problems or is nonexistant in
_High Frontier_.

## No financing plan:

You can't just assume people will fork over $400 billion for a
good idea.  The largest R&D project of this type (though much
less risky technologically) was the Alaska Oil Pipeline, which cost
an order of magnitude less.  There is no possibility of raising $400
billion for any single sure-thing project in our financial
markets, much less for risky ventures.  $40 million is typical for VC
start-ups (such as Orbital Sciences Corp.) If you can get the government to
fund most of the R&D (for example build a prototype SPS and lunar mining
equipment) and convince large utilities they can make a much better
return than coal or nuclear plants or conservation programs, you might be
able to raise $4 billion when the interest rates are low.

## Feeble cash flow projections:

What is the net present value?  How long will the R&D period last?
What are the effects of possible changes in inflation, taxes, and
interest rates during this period?  If you want money, talk in a
language investors understand.  Some notes:

* Inflation between 1969 and 1980 averaged closer to 10% than 5%.
* The stock market sagged and interest rates went through the roof,
  so additional capital would have been difficult to get during
  the 70's and early 80's.
* 15-20% is the _expected_ rate of return for a risky high-tech
  venture.

## R&D plan has huge gaps:

_High Frontier_ points to no serious designs for space-based mining
and manufacturing equipment, the most important element in reducing the
cost of SPS materials.  When the DOE seriously studied SPS, they found
that, if launched from Earth, it would cost over twice as much as
Earth-produced electricity, assuming $100/lb. launch costs (we currently
pay more than $2,000/lb.) There has never been any serious R&D, much
less prototyping, of lunar mining equipment.  Thus, O'Neill had no basis
from which to say that the R&D and deployment costs would be only $400
billion, or take only XX years.  Note that NASA is proposing $400 billion
to send 4 people to Mars 20 years from now, a project significantly less
ambitious than SPS, lunar mines and space habitats.  NASA has quite a bit
more experience in space than Dr. O'Neill, so the reasonable investor,
minimizing risks, will take heed of NASA's projections.

Furthermore, there is no engineering or financial comparison of manned vs.
teleoperated space operations, so that demonstrating the economics of SPS
does not in itself demonstrate the economics of putting people on-site in
space.  If a competitor undercut manned lunar mining with teleoperated
mining, the investors in the manned base would be out a hefty chunk of
money ($100 billion according to NASA estimates for a minimal 8-man base).

## Marketing plan simplistic

The marketing plan makes long-term projections of electricity demand
similar to those the nuclear power industry was making during this time
period.  No mention of possible competition -- the Japanese, Soviets,
another consortium building SPS, new Earth-based sources of energy
or conservation.

Power from space is not dead, but it must meet most or all of the
following criteria to be of interest to utilities:

* can be developed and deployed on utility time scales (<10 years),
* can be developed and deployed within the constraints of utility
  budgets and financial market capacities (R&D < $5 billion)
* contains redundancy to avoid risks,
* all equipment has been prototyped and is known to be reliable,
* reduces electricity costs by at least a factor of 2

With advances in technology, SPS or power transmitted from Jupiter might
meet these requirements, but there is quite a bit of science and technology
to be developed between now and then.   The initial plan would start
small and look for a niche -- for example beaming power to the Japanese,
who pay $.20 or more per kwh.


>He proposed it originally (I believe) in 1969.  That means
>his costs were based on Saturn V, not the Shuttle ( c/ see note below)
>Also, these numbers were based on selling electricity at 2 or 3 pennies per
>killowatt/hour.  You probably pay between 10 and 15 cents/kllowatt/hour.

No, I pay $.05/kilowatt-hour.  But thanks for playing.  :-)
Like any other market, there are folks who will pay through
the nose for it (Japan) and folks that won't (the Pacific Northwest)
and folks that can't afford it (the Third World).


>...
>The fact is, a decent, safe, profitable space infrastructure will
>cost about as much as our currrent air-travel infrastructure.

Our current air-travel infrastructure was built over a period of
80 years by hundreds of different companies.  It started at an
appropriate scale, with bicycle parts and motorcycle engines,
and evolved as technogy and market evolved.  It was thousands of
pieces of new technology and hundreds of diverse, well thought out
business plans that built aviation, not one dramatic but narrow vision.


>However, no
>private investor will threaten his job by starting up the bootstrapping req'd
>to get the ball rolling until there is some way to measure the risk, and judge
>it acceptable.

True.  That is what a business plan, with the elements I described,
is for.


>...
>Fun to dream, but meanwhile, we'll have to depend on the Gov.  That's just how
>air travel got started.

Wilbur and Orville didn't have government funding.  The Boeing 747
(largest commercial R&D project in aerospace history) was not
government funded.  Et cetera.


>People didn't believe that planes were safe.  So, the
>feds awarded (name forgotten) a mail contract.  Thus was born the industry
>that eventually became Federal Express.  The book ENTREPENEURS will give
>you details.  Now, for fifty bucks (day's labor from my point of view) I
>can get to Chicago see my family in under an hour (I'm near Lansing, MI)

This type of initiative would also be a good idea for space today, IMHO.
Note that the mail subsidy amounted to no more than a few $billion in today's
money.  The government also did not control the design or operation of
the technology.


>(/c note re; shuttle prices)   The main reason that no one wants to invest in
>space in this country is the cost of launching.  [Big Dumb Booster claims]

Large, well-funded organizations have been promising dramatically lower
launch costs for decades, and nobody has produced.  The reasonable
investor, minimizing risk, projects that launch costs will not fall
significantly in the investable future.



--
Nick Szabo            [e-mail]
Embrace Change...  Keep the Values...  Hold Dear the Laughter...

------------------------------

Date: 17 Feb 91 04:42:37 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Allan Adler)
Subject: GIF Format


I took a look at the SPACE archives at ames.arc.nasa.gov and saw some gif
files there. I don't know anything about gif files except that presumably
gif is some special format.

Where can I find out about gif format ?

Where can I find source code for programs that work with files in gif format ?

What does one use to display these files on, say, an IBM PC ?

How can one tell from the name of the gif file what it is a picture of ? E.g.
what is i24.gif and why should I have known from the name what it is ?

Allan Adler
[e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: 16 Feb 91 09:24:34 GMT
From: agate!bionet!uwm.edu!rpi![e-mail]  (Michael V. Kent)
Subject: Re: SPACE Digest V13 #124

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:
>
>The following are approximations from memory, but pretty much on the mark.
>
>A typical caravel cost 1/10 of 1% of Portugal's GNP (one of the smaller
>European nations, about a tenth the population of the U.S. today).  It
>carried 50 people and hundreds of tons of goods.   That's 1/500 % of GNP
>per person.  A space station carries 4 people and costs 1% of the GNP of
>the wealthiest nation on the planet.  1/4 % of GNP per person.  Space
>stations are at least three orders of magnitude more expensive per
>person than Portugal's caravels.  (500*10/4).

I don't know much about the cost of ancient caravels, but I think I know
I little about the cost of Freedom.  Your numbers are a little of, I think.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the FY91 budget for Freedom was about $1.8G,
and the estimated GNP is about $5.5 trillion.  That puts the cost of Freedom
at 0.033% of GNP / 4 persons = 0.0082% GNP / person.  Or 1/122 % of GNP/person.
This puts it at 4 times as costly as a caravel if your Portugese numbers are
correct.  Significant, but not three orders of magnitude.

>
>There has been no financially successful space station, and the
>wise investor knows we are two to three orders of magnitude away
>in the economy of our technology from this.  NASA's Fred --
>several $billions for CAD files and piles of paper after at leaast
>8 years -- is about as far away from financially successful as anything
>in an investor's worst nightmares.

Two things --
     1) Freedom has been in the design stage for only about three years.
So far, about $3.7 billion have been spent on it.  Parts fabrication is to
begin in about one year.  That is not out of line with other major aerospace
projects, even those that do no leave the atmosphere.  Considering spaceflight
is one or two orders of magnitude more difficult than air flight, we are
not doing too bad.  Just for comparison, about $3 billion was spent on the
MD-11, and that is only a derivative of the DC-10.  Many more dollars will
need to be spent on that before the money coming in will exceed the money
going out.

     2) The federal government is not in the money-making business.  They
are in the business of providing services which private enterprise and local
governments cannot provide due to scale or risk.  Hence the federal government
provides services like national defense, Interstate highways, and a good deal
of scientific knowledge.  Freedom should not be compared to an oil tanker but
instead to a research lab.  The federal government operates at least a dozen
other research labs -- some of them in remote areas.  Freedom is a little more
remote than most.

Note:  I used the oil tanker as a modern equivalent of a Portugese caravel.

Nick, I mean this as a polite question:  What does your company do.  I'd be
surprised if it is an aerospace company.

Michael Kent                                       [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: 7 Feb 91 16:53:56 GMT
From: bonnie.concordia.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Solar Impact Mission.

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Charles Radley) writes:
>Some of the velocity would be lost due to thermal dissipation, +but
>most of it would be redi+rected into a new solar orbit with much higher
>eccenricity.   The trade of+f is increasing the aphelion by reducing
>the perihlion.   This is done by changing the velocity vector even
>though the magnitude does not increase...
>    Well, Henry, how does that sound ?

Correct as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.  If the planet
were stationary, this would be a reasonable analysis.  You keep the same
magnitude of velocity *with respect to the planet*, but since the planet
is moving, that can result in either increased or decreased velocity
with respect to the Sun.  If you bounce a ball off a car moving rapidly
towards you, the ball comes back faster than you threw it.
--
"Maybe we should tell the truth?"      | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
"Surely we aren't that desperate yet." |  [e-mail]   utzoo!henry

------------------------------

End of SPACE Digest V13 #167
*******************