Space Colonization Economics, Part 4

[chris_gerrib]

In Part 3, I came to the conclusion that once humans decide to stay on the Moon or in orbit, they will be as self-sufficient as possible. So the question is, "why will humans go?"

The usual answer, "mining," is wrong, at least in my opinion. The right answer is "tourism," with a side of "research."

See, in the near future, there is a huge up-front cost in getting to the Moon, let alone setting anything up there. The logical (from a transportation infrastructure basis) intermediate point, low Earth orbit (LEO) is notably lacking in stuff to mine.

But if people will pay to visit the Gobi Desert, they'll definitely pay to visit LEO. Here's the key point - the people paying to go aren't paying so much for the experience - they are paying so they can sit around at parties and say "when I visited X, I..." So, virtual reality will never surpass actually visiting places.

Thus, we'll get orbital hotels first. The very first orbital hotels will be zero-gee "camps," but that will get old quick. The first celebrity who comes down from one and tell space-sick stories on a talk show will drive a move for spun stations, a la Von Braun. Actually, the fractional gravity of the sleeping / eating areas will be an additional selling point.

These orbital hotels and the infrastructure to get there will lead to (relatively) low-cost Lunar access. Taking an Earth-to-orbit capsule and modifying it to go to the Moon is fairly straight-forward. (Earth to Mars, not so much.) That will lead to Lunar hotels and research bases, a la Antarctica.

Well after we get those bases, we'll see Lunar mining. By then, the basic research needed to support life on the Moon will be in place, although I expect the Lunar mines to be mostly remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) driven from Earth, with a small human repair crew. The driver for Lunar mines will be second-order economics, or the NIMBY phenomenon.

Basically, mining, a dirty, dangerous and environmentally-challenged industry, will find itself being regulated and lawsuit-ed off of Earth. Once mining starts to move off of Earth, all sorts of mining operations, such as water for the Moon or metals to build space structures, become viable. A positive feedback cycle starts.

But at the beginning of it all, tourism is the driver. And the first tourism is orbital, which means cheap(er) orbital access.

Previous entries: Part 1, Part 2, whole series.

Comments

[dqg-neal.livejournal.com]

And how soon after the first fractional gravity sleeping areas will they have the first brothel? I mean sleeping in that environment brings back interesting stories.. but the half-a-million-mile high club with be the next step in human evolution. *grin*

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

I doubt they'll have big neon signs advertising "get laid here" any time soon, but I imagine that for the right price one will be able to get laid in even the first hotels.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Indeed. The clientele in the earliest zero-gee hotels will be billionaires. They'd have the kind of money for which many women who were not normally prostitutes would consider sex-for-pay.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

The first celebrity who comes down from one and tell space-sick stories on a talk show will drive a move for spun stations, a la Von Braun. Actually, the fractional gravity of the sleeping / eating areas will be an additional selling point.

The more so because the possibility of simulating gravity through rotation would be well known to the sort of people who could afford the trip and be interested in making it. We'd have spun-gravity stations now if the major space agencies didn't persist in looking at space as a zone for pure science only instead of a place to colonize.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I think we will have some space hotels but I'm still not convinced there will be a simple evolution from space hotels to colonization for the same reasons that while there are tourists in the Gobi Desert and Antartica and Everest - there aren't all that many of them and they're building on the back of an infrastructure that existed, in some cases for centuries before tourists got in on the act.

The kind of mass development that we see in Europe's sunnier climes (Spain, Spanish Islands, Greek Islands) needed a significant technology shift to spur it - i.e. the DeHavilland Comet plus a local population who had an eye for the main chance.

Nothing on the drawing board at the moment is looking like it's going to give us cheap enough access to space (CEATS) to spur a larger market - and I suspect that from a materials perspective second hand space habitats won't be something you'd want until we've had a couple of generations of 10+ year in orbit habitation units and ironed out all the inevitable problems.

So, yes, Lunar bases a-la Antarctica, probably a Mars base with annual crew rotations, some Bigelow style space hotels - probably in the 2030s-2050s time frame. I'm feeling that without a significant shift in our launch technology paradigm, the like of which we don't have on the drawing boards at the moment, that's about where we'll be.

Now that's an improvement on now, but I'd still put the total off world population at well under 1000 and potentially not a lot over 100 by 2050.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Speed of development will definitely be driven by cost of transport. How fast the transport cost falls is anybody's guess.

[jeff-duntemann.livejournal.com]

Just a quick note of encouragement here: This is one of the best things you've ever done. Please keep at it.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked it.