Just to clarify, I am not opposed to the O’Neil vision — though, personally, I think I will stick to planets rather than glorified suburbs in the sky. I was only arguing that to get to O’Neil, it’s best to start as small as possible.

Dale,

My answer to your question is here,

http://www.speakeasy.org/~donaldfr/sfmodel.pdf

Arguing by historical analysis, it takes a market to drive commercial space development, and, at least initially, that market has to be put in place by the government. The upshot is, no private organization is going to build the transportation to get to a lunar base until the lunar base is there. However, once that transportation is commercialized, it allows the existing lunar base to grow into a town and then a city.

— Donald

Rutan is a long way from producing spacecraft with capabilities of Boeing, Lockheed, ESA or even China. What Rutan did was great but he doesn’t have the same infrastructure or R&D budget as the large aerospace companies. These companies have spent billions of there own money to develop both reusable and expendable vehicles. Their investments are based on the customer who will buy their products. Rutan has one buyer for 5 suborbital spaceships for a product that is currently in development.

America cannot wait 15 or 20 years for a replacement for the Shuttle so it will look to a combination of private companies, mostly large aerospace to build and service whatever space systems are required. The U.S. cannot be stuck on the ground, VSE or not.

O’Neilians don’t require a large infrastructure and as matter a fact Gerard O’Neil develop plans using robots to mine and build the first habitats on the moon. His plan was very affordable and is incorporated in many of the plans today. He developed the first rail gun for use on the moon to send raw materials into space. Gerard O’Neil combine vision and practical means. He is truly missed today.
http://www.ssi.org/obit.html (This is a good summary of O’Neil by Freeman Dyson)

Commercial spaceflight and NASA spaceflight will develop independently at first. Commercial spaceflight is doing mostly suborbital flights and NASA is doing orbital flights and beyond.

If commercial spaceflight develops an orbital vehicle, then there could be some commercial deals: NASA could purchase orbital flights, etc.

The Apollo era produced great national pride and demonstrated to the old Soviet Union that the U.S. was a force to be reckoned with. However, public support diminished as the cost of this exploration policy escalated.

NASA then began the space shuttle program, promising that these expenditures would eventually yield a monetary return on investment through the development of a commercial industry that would not require government funding.

Then NASA began the space station project. This project was also touted as important to the commercialization of manned space flight, on orbit and beyond.

Now we are being told that we need to abandon the space shuttle and the space station, 2010 and 2017 respectively. Instead we will redevelop the Apollo style spacecraft and restart the exploration of the Moon.

Does this mean that NASA and the federal government are going to ignore the development of a commercial industry, independent of government funding? How will this new exploration policy develop an orbital, commercial market in the manned space flight industry?

Thanks

During the speeches of SpaceShipOne’s first qualifying flight, it was said that prize money wasn’t as important as the goal and the belief it can be done.

It’s important to read the criticism to keep in touch with mainstream opinion. Although the critics keep repeating the same tired arguments ad nauseam.