[AR] Re: Orbital Assembly plans to build Voyager, a rotating space station in 2026
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "(AR) ocket List" <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2021 18:02:53 -0500 (EST)
On Mon, 8 Mar 2021, John Dom wrote:
At the time this came up as a thread, all on this list voted against the
orbital gravity ... concept during period 2011-2013.
Uh, nobody ever said it was a bad idea -- only that it was harder than it
looked, and there were valid reasons why existing stations hadn't done it.
As for this one, to quote O.A.'s management: "...we're definitely looking
in the tens of billions of dollars for the full construction... And I'll
just leave it there, because it's still a bit speculative at this point."
Tens of billions, for *markets* that are mostly still speculative? Good
luck on the fundraising for that.
Note that "tens of billions" is not the big issue. Private investments on
that scale get made with some frequency... for projects whose technical
uncertainty, market uncertainty, and regulatory uncertainty closely
approach zero. That's what it takes to attract investors who see your
dream purely as a money-multiplying machine, and don't care whether the
product is space hotels or spiced sausages.
For projects like this one, in which all three uncertainties loom large,
you need investors who are buying into a dream... but they don't generally
have that kind of money. Need some much-cheaper intermediate steps first.
Henry
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