Date: Sun, 29 Jan 1989 20:08-EST From: space-tech-request@CS.CMU.EDU To: "~/st/lists/stdigest" Subject: Space-tech Digest #24 [ Warning: this discussion is a bit long-winded. If you skip this digest entirely, you probably won't have missed too much. -- Marc ] Contents: Mike Baek Re: Space Industry and Policy Joe Beckenbach Re: Space Industry and Policy Paul Dietz Re: Space Industry and Policy Randall Parker Re: Space Industry and Policy Bill Higgins Journal of Lunar Exploration and Development ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jan 89 20:11 EST From: V130J6WX%UBVMS.BITNET@VMA.CC.CMU.EDU Subject: RE: Space Industry and Policy To: C43RGP%ENG4.gm@hac2arpa.HAC.COM, space-tech@cs.CMU.EDU I'd like a discussion of what scientific and technological advances would be helpful in the creation of new space industries. 1) communications and 2) remote sensing. to discern and their probable order of development is obvious: 3) Low Mass Materials Processing (biochemicals, small alloy parts, possibly electronic parts) 4) High Mass Materials Processing with non-Earth sourced materials (asteroid or moon mining for LEO processing centers) Space Manufacturing: space manufacturing-pure crystal growth, metallurgy, and the electrophoretic seperation of various substances in order to achieve purity not possible on earth. Pharmaceuticals: certain drugs and chemicals can be produced more efficiently in space. eg. the enzyme urokinase is produced on earth at a cost of $1500 per dose.. in microgravity it would cost 100/dose. Electronics: many inorganic substances can be produced in space more easily and with higher quality than on earth. eg. ceramic oxide crystals can be made more purely and symetrically in micro-grav environment. Glass: pure flouride glass, usable in fiber optics, may be more highly doped to provide mixes for high power laser cutting. ENERGY: although acquiring energy from solar power satellites is currently noncompetitive. experts at the OTA,NSC, and MIT believe SPS's can be implemented at a competitive level. THE ABOVE INFO PLUS MORE was obtained fom: ASTROBUSINESS by Finch and Lee Moore. Mike Baek V130j6wx@ubvms "What are you doing Dave?" ------------------------------ To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Subject: Re: RE: Space Industry and Policy Date: Wed, 25 Jan 89 09:20:22 -0800 From: Joe Beckenbach (joe@cit-vax.caltech.edu) Adding my two bits to the discussion [inflation, ya know :-]. > I'd like a discussion of what scientific and > technological advances would be helpful in the creation of new > space industries. Cheap boost to orbit-- it's got to economically worth it in order for there to be space industry. Commsat manufacturers are one example: it takes a lot of money to put up an orbiting relay station. Right now there's too little, too expensively, too restricted, for a wide variety of 'space industry' ideas to be practical. The problem is that, more than any other startup, a space startup is going to have to raise immense amounts of money to get any decent amount of space time and volume. If you can last long enough to get a Get-Away Special or some form of piggyback ride, great-- but there's the building costs, insurance costs, cashflow problems, and ALL the weaknesses that startups are heir to. And a space startup has to dodge around all the space legislation just to do anything, as well as the usual business stuff. It takes more than dedication, it takes funding and the ability to get quick results. Right now, nothing in terms of getting launches can be really short-term enough to let a small space business grow. I mean, the financial community expects that after three years, either you've sunk or you've survived long enough to get 'normal' financing. How many payloads can one company of ten [eight designer & manufacturing, one business, one support] put up? Using my experience at Mars Observer Camera, and extrapolating down to common materials and mass-production, such a small company could probably produce one satellite a month. Are they going to all go up into the wild black yonder without some form of special launch concession from a launch servicer? No. And at five grand a pound, three years' worth of (say) 20 pounds a month [MOC is 15 pounds], we talking a debt of a third of a million dollars, just in launch costs. The material costs would be [very rough, and probably too low] a half-million, plus fees and insurance for another half-million. Just to be solvent enough to pay the lawyer needed, the three-year income and extended credit would have to beat $1.3M; that's $2000 a month from each satellite, assuming that the first satellite goes up the first month, the second the second, etcetera, and each satellite provides a steady monthly income. Now you want to pay your people, right? For each person willing to be paid $20k salary yearly with no benefits, add $1700 to the monthly income needed. That extends to an additional satellite per payrolled employee, with the payroll beginning the month 'his' satellite goes up. After four years, then, this hypothetical company would be dead-even, having assumed to have magically waltzed its way into the arms of a reliable, once-a-month launch vehicle, climbed the bureaucratic walls, survived being run roughshod by suppliers, and charmed its way through its cashflow problems. Large companies have the distinct advantages of: name recognition, good credit, low cashflow problems [these are related], and good relations with suppliers. For most, the disadvantages are: lack of flexibility, payroll overhead, interior bureaucratic overhead, and others too numerous and obvious to mention. Some large corporations allow 'intrapeneurs', which attempt to combine the large and small, taking the advantages while leaving the disadvan- tages. This isn't as widespread as one would hope. My conclusion: unless there's an intrapeneurial framework sitting around somewhere, a fledgling 'space industry' isn't going to spring out of Zeus' forehead in any form. It will necessarily be operaton on the fringes of the rules: volunteer amateur effort, desperate scrambling either for funding or (hah!) charity launch service, and contorted efforts to look like a respectable group to potential financial supporters and like a non-business to the business regulators. I think that the universities would actually be the big win. After all, the Mars Observer Camera is a Caltech effort; other universities, including Caltech, have placed Get-Away Specials for small experiments. It's just that, at present, there doesn't seem to be any stability amid the chaos-- and it's in the stabilizing chaos that small startups breed, die, and (occasionally) thrive long enough for it to help smooth the waters into a fledgling industry. It took the airlines what, twenty years from the first small flights to the carrying of mail which let things start happening. Perhaps a REAL follow-through of International Space University.... involving support from consortia of universities and 'mainstream' corporations and governments in a hands-off intrapeneurial sense.... Well, dreams do sometimes come true. Joe Beckenbach joe@cit-vax.caltech.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Jan 89 15:13:24 EST From: dietz@cs.rochester.edu To: V130J6WX%UBVMS.BITNET@VMA.CC.CMU.EDU Cc: C43RGP%ENG4.gm@hac2arpa.HAC.COM, space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Subject: Space Industry and Policy I'd like to see space manufacturing too. Unfortunately, many of the ideas have not turned out to be economically viable. See the 12/19/88 issue of Aviation Week for a sobering assessment. Electrophoresis: McD-D abandoned it. Terrestrial techniques *could* eventually make materials as pure as in space, and probably would (or already have) before McD-D could make a profit. Low flight rates didn't help. So much for urokinase, erythropoetin, etc. One trick I've heard is used on the ground is to genetically modify the gene for a useful protein so that it has a long chain of charged amino acids hanging off one end. The resulting protein is much easier to separate by electrophoresis (for example), since it has an unusual charge/mass ratio. The chain of amino acids is then removed with a protease; the protein, now separated from other proteins of similar charge/mass ratio, is further purified. Metallurgy: the AW&ST issue quotes an academic microgravity researcher as saying that he can't even imagine a product in this area that could be profitable. Costs are just too high and markets too small to justify the development costs. Energy: clearly at current launch costs terrestrial built SPS is a nonstarter, and launch costs must come down by at least two orders of magnitude for this to change. Use of ET materials would require up-front investments that are much too large. The biggest problem is that the time scale is too long; terrestrial sources will continue to improve. Not to be completely negative: SPS would make a lot more sense if powersats were a thousand times smaller. This is impossible with microwaves, but is possible if we use lasers for power transmission, since the diffraction limited beam is much smaller. Suggestion: we should concentrate research on efficient sun-pumped lasers and efficient laser-light-to-electricity converters. Lasers would also not have the problem with microwave interference, and would avoid the need for making or operating PV cells in space. Electronics: the market for expensive space-made crystals appears to be limited at prices implied by current costs. I have a feeling that techniques based on carefully engineered nanometer scale features, like heterostructures, will be the direction in which the field goes, not space-grown bulk crystals. One area of space materials processing that is attracting a lot of commercial interest -- and I mean potential users, not hucksters -- is growing protein crystals for X-ray structure determination. Drug companies are willing to pay $100K to 200K for each good crystal. There are many thousands of different proteins involved in many illnesses, and drug companies will want to grow many crystals of each (for example, with different metal atoms added, at different pH, or in combination with drugs to see how they bind), so there's a large market here. Like comsats, this area produces information, not a physical product, so it isn't as sensitive to launch costs. Paul F. Dietz dietz@cs.rochester.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Jan 89 15:28:14 PST From: C43RGP%ENG4.gm@hac2arpa.hac.com To: SPACE_TECH@hac2arpa.hac.com Subject: Future space industry In response to my posting about space industry and policy some have argued that there are very few low-mass products that might be made cost-effectively in space today. From this rather obviously true statement it is then concluded that pursuing the development of profitable industries of this type is a waste of time and money. But isn't there a fallacy in this reasoning? I don't believe that we can just sit at our desks and state that theoretically we can show a priori to large scale investigation that it is unlikely we will find low mass materials processing which is worth doing in space. Rather, it is more likely that should a large number of chemists, biologists, materials scientists, et. al. be given long-term opportunities to conduct research in their fields in microgravity at least a few will discover some commercially justifiable activities. But then, isn't this expectation of mine the same one that is used to justify the bulk of government funding of the sciences here on Earth? And hasn't the history of science demonstrated that this is a very reasonable expectation? I listed low mass materials processing before high mass materials processing precisely because the launch costs are so high. If the cost per pound of moving between Earth and space is high then it makes sense to pursue processing of materials from which can be derived a high value per pound. The only argument that I can see against this is that launch costs are going to drop so rapidly that we'll be able launch equipment to mine asteroids before profitable low mass materials technologies can be developed into profitable industries. While current launch costs imply high costs for such products as semiconductor crystals, there are long-term competitive advantages for the U.S. economy that can be derived from doing the research on these areas now. When launch costs do come down far enough U.S. industry can move into production more rapidly if the basic research has already been done. This could allow U.S. industry to establish a commanding lead since for many markets the window of opportunity is short in duration. If I'm wrong about all this then one of two options should be considered for the space program: 1) take all the existing money and use in on R&D for new and potentially lower cost launch technology; 2) Give NASA's budget authorization to the National Science Foundation. Randall Parker c43rgp%eng4.gm@hac2arpa.hac.com My company isn't responsible for these opinions, etc, etc.... ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Jan 89 17:56 CST From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey Subject: Journal of Lunar Exploration and Development To: SPACE-TECH@CS.CMU.EDU Original_To: SPACETECH I'm passing on an announcement from Dr. Gay Canough, who's starting a new journal. If you have an interest in lunar affairs, subscribe or get your institution's library to subscribe. Bill Higgins Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory HIGGINS@FNALB.BITNET SPAN/HEPnet: 43011::HIGGINS ========================================================== ANNOUNCING : **** THE JOURNAL OF LUNAR EXPLORATION AND DEVELOPMENT **** PURPOSE: This publication is meant to serve as a forum for discussion of lunar science and development activities. Because workers in this area are scattered around the world, it is important to keep in touch with work going on through this type of publication. There has proved to be widespread interest in returning to the Moon, both in the private and government sectors. It is our aim to publish all articles relevant to the Moon. FORMAT: Articles on anything relating to the Moon are welcome. Some examples: * Scientific papers on any lunar studies * Summary articles on past lunar studies * New analysis of old lunar data (which may or may not have been looked at before) * Lunar Base studies,designs * Materials processing as related to Lunar materials * Power systems for lunar utilizations * Designs for robotic prospectors and mining missions, as well as manned ones. * ETC... These are just a few items, not meant to cover everything. We encourage submissions of all kinds to find out all the different Moon related work going on. You may request peer review for articles. In addition to technical articles there will be a section for news; that is, who is doing what, where and conference and meeting announcements. There will also be a forum for opinions (viewpoints and letters to editor). And there will be some departments, such as 'Problem of the Month'. Feel free to suggest other sections, departments. This journal will be completely public, so please do not send proprietary information. SUBMISSIONS: Please send all submissions to Dr. Gay E. Canough, Editor ETM, Inc. PO Box 67 Endicott, NY 13760 *** DEADLINE for the first issue is March 1,1989 *** If you have a computer, we encourage electronic submissions. Call Gay at (607) 785-6499 for assistance in phone transfer. Or you may send a 5.25 floppy disk. We have an IBM PC XT, and current formats supported are DisplayWrite 3 and ASCII. In about 2 months, we will support Pagemaker and Generic CAD formats as well. BITnet users may send articles to CANOUGH@FNAL. In the near future a bulletin board will be installed. SUBSCRIPTIONS: We are accepting subscriptions now for $50/yr. The first issue will appear in March, 1989. The subscription rate is set only to cover the costs of putting out the journal. The journal will be quarterly in 1989 and monthly starting in 1990. Make checks payable to ExtraTerrestrial Materials, Inc. ========================================================== ------------------------------ End of Space-tech Digest #24 *******************