![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Space and Market Forces...
May. 10th, 2004 11:29 amA copy of something from my other Blog Atomic Razor!
I've been having a discussion on sci.space.policy on whether or not there is a market for space related activities. The glib answer is, yes, of course there is. Space, after all, is a big business - huge, in fact. At the end of the last century space related activities were worth something like $65bn globally. This raises a number of important issues which have great impact on the substantive discussion we were having on sci.space.policy.
The SSP thread was about the development of manned space vehicles and how they will be used. My feeling on the subject is there probably, for the time being at least, isn't all that much of a market for space tourism. I also question if that will ever change. The opposing camp basically believes that if you can suceed in low cost space access, then a market will emerge.
That is possible. Certainly there is economic theory to support such a position, if the marginal cost of an activity drops to a certain point then if people can afford it then they will. They will point out the growth in low cost air travel that the DeHavilland Comet and Boeing 707 created.
This is where my problems start with this theory. The jet age revolutionised travel, it became affordable to travel to many places and the package holiday business really took off as lots of people could, in short time be taken to places where they wanted to go. For the Northern Europeans this meant sunnier climes with low cost accomodation and booze, I shall probably do this myself this year, I see from the web I could get 2 weeks in the Red Sea All Inclusive for under $600 per person. A real bargain, as that includes food and drink, it doesn't take much to work out how much the holiday is actually costing you.
Human space flight has a problem here. I have no doubt that sometime this year Burt Rutan is going to win the X Prize. However, what is the actual global market for sub-orbital flights? I'm not sure and data is pretty hard to come by. People estimate a few hundred thousand people world wide are interested. That's a good niche - there's plenty of niche holidays around, the Antartic, war zones and so forth - but its not 20 million Brits alone flying to the Med for the summer - that's the difference between a mass market and a niche one. A mass market builds a dozen airports, hundreds of planes, thousands of hotels, tens of thousands of package options. A niche runs specialist holidays for a small number to places that few are interested in.
Even then, I see more problems. For a start, from an engineering perspective a sub-orbital vehicle is significantly different to an orbital one. Taking Rutan's Spaceship 1, there's no enviromental systems, it doesn't need them for the length of trip. It doesn't need thermal protection as it is not re-entering. The problem is, when you start to factor this sort of thing in, the scaling becomes a problem. In much of engineering it isn't simply a case of making something twice as large, the changes that alone can make are huge, and while I think Spaceship 1 can probably go slightly higher and slightly faster, it is an evolutionary dead end for orbit.
So, a new vehicle will be needed.
But a vehicle to carry a limited number of people really only does just that. You still need somewhere for them to go. The wisdom of SSP is that once people can get there, the cost of other activities will also come down (a logical leap which is, in my mind, inconsistent) - we can launch space hotels and space stations but they still cost the kind of money which screws up the long term economics. I'm also unconvinced that there will ever be low cost medium and heavy launch capacity the like of which is needed to put space stations into LEO. This has implications for going to the moon and other places.
Satellites will continue to be a large market, and there will be a niche market for LEO and sub-orbital travel. But at this point in time I can't see it turning into a mass market which will lead to human expansion into space.
So, what will lead to that? To be honest I'm not sure. I don't see government involvement in space activities changing any time soon. The high Libertarian space lobby as typified by commentators like Rand Simberg don't like that. They see billions wasted, no real expansion and no future from the government. They might be right. However, that does not automatically mean that the market will suddenly provide.
Space, like other frontiers will probably be openned by the government sector, the markets will follow. That is, of course, assuming that we don't have some form of Singularity first.
I've been having a discussion on sci.space.policy on whether or not there is a market for space related activities. The glib answer is, yes, of course there is. Space, after all, is a big business - huge, in fact. At the end of the last century space related activities were worth something like $65bn globally. This raises a number of important issues which have great impact on the substantive discussion we were having on sci.space.policy.
The SSP thread was about the development of manned space vehicles and how they will be used. My feeling on the subject is there probably, for the time being at least, isn't all that much of a market for space tourism. I also question if that will ever change. The opposing camp basically believes that if you can suceed in low cost space access, then a market will emerge.
That is possible. Certainly there is economic theory to support such a position, if the marginal cost of an activity drops to a certain point then if people can afford it then they will. They will point out the growth in low cost air travel that the DeHavilland Comet and Boeing 707 created.
This is where my problems start with this theory. The jet age revolutionised travel, it became affordable to travel to many places and the package holiday business really took off as lots of people could, in short time be taken to places where they wanted to go. For the Northern Europeans this meant sunnier climes with low cost accomodation and booze, I shall probably do this myself this year, I see from the web I could get 2 weeks in the Red Sea All Inclusive for under $600 per person. A real bargain, as that includes food and drink, it doesn't take much to work out how much the holiday is actually costing you.
Human space flight has a problem here. I have no doubt that sometime this year Burt Rutan is going to win the X Prize. However, what is the actual global market for sub-orbital flights? I'm not sure and data is pretty hard to come by. People estimate a few hundred thousand people world wide are interested. That's a good niche - there's plenty of niche holidays around, the Antartic, war zones and so forth - but its not 20 million Brits alone flying to the Med for the summer - that's the difference between a mass market and a niche one. A mass market builds a dozen airports, hundreds of planes, thousands of hotels, tens of thousands of package options. A niche runs specialist holidays for a small number to places that few are interested in.
Even then, I see more problems. For a start, from an engineering perspective a sub-orbital vehicle is significantly different to an orbital one. Taking Rutan's Spaceship 1, there's no enviromental systems, it doesn't need them for the length of trip. It doesn't need thermal protection as it is not re-entering. The problem is, when you start to factor this sort of thing in, the scaling becomes a problem. In much of engineering it isn't simply a case of making something twice as large, the changes that alone can make are huge, and while I think Spaceship 1 can probably go slightly higher and slightly faster, it is an evolutionary dead end for orbit.
So, a new vehicle will be needed.
But a vehicle to carry a limited number of people really only does just that. You still need somewhere for them to go. The wisdom of SSP is that once people can get there, the cost of other activities will also come down (a logical leap which is, in my mind, inconsistent) - we can launch space hotels and space stations but they still cost the kind of money which screws up the long term economics. I'm also unconvinced that there will ever be low cost medium and heavy launch capacity the like of which is needed to put space stations into LEO. This has implications for going to the moon and other places.
Satellites will continue to be a large market, and there will be a niche market for LEO and sub-orbital travel. But at this point in time I can't see it turning into a mass market which will lead to human expansion into space.
So, what will lead to that? To be honest I'm not sure. I don't see government involvement in space activities changing any time soon. The high Libertarian space lobby as typified by commentators like Rand Simberg don't like that. They see billions wasted, no real expansion and no future from the government. They might be right. However, that does not automatically mean that the market will suddenly provide.
Space, like other frontiers will probably be openned by the government sector, the markets will follow. That is, of course, assuming that we don't have some form of Singularity first.
