Save Your Spacebucks

to talk about something space tourism again. I was about to say we we literally just talked about space tourism, but we didn't talk enough about money, the really exciting part of space. Alright, Joe had mentioned that he was upset that he wasn't able to afford it. Yeah, all of the cool things I want to do are way too expensive. Well, Joe, come on, give me a rundown. What how what are we talking about with too expensive? Well, just a few examples there were come and he's offering

suborbital space flight. And as a reminder, that's where you sort of you go up in a spacecraft. It's pressurized vehicle and you technically enter space, but you don't orbit the Earth only just a ninety minute johnt Yeah, you stay up there briefly, you experience a little bit of weightlessness, you see the curvature of the Earth and the stars, and that sounds really cool. But Virgin Galactic is citing that that's going to cost you two dollars per person's

that's just the proposal. Yeah. Um, so there is orbital space tourism, So that's where you would go up and in a vehicle, say join with the space station like the International Space Station, or maybe a little bit further in the future with some kind of private space station. Um, and you would orbit the Earth there. Trips like that so far of cost in the range of fifty million. It's pretty expensive. Yeah. If you want to go to the moon, and I totally want to go to the Moon,

it sounds great, doesn't it. Yeah, well it's going to cost you seven fifty million dollars, or if you want to take your wife with you or somebody else, I don't know, it's going to be one point five billion dollars for the two of you. I have so many jokes I want to make right now, but I also want to remain married, So I'm going to not joke about going to the moon without my wife. Let's be so sweet. Yeah, that would be a would be a

romantic vacation, Gray, Gray, romantic adventure. You could have another honey moon. Congratulations sir, with across the line, with a quiet, quiet disinterce in space. No one can hear your scowling disapproval. Okay. So yeah, so expensive. There's no way anybody. I don't know about y'all's personal financials, there's no way I could

ever ever afford to do this. And in fact, I remember reading an interview actually it was more of a more of a report that someone wrote about Richard Garriott, who is the one member of the the space tourists they hate that term, but the people, the private citizens who have paid to go up in the space private restaurants. He was the He's one that is considered to be kind of an evangelist for for uh space exploration among private citizens and um also the only one that I've

ever personally met. But he was saying that he felt that that his work was going very far into the democratization of space travel. And the person who wrote the article critiqued that a little bit by saying, well, at and at thirty million dollars to go up, that's not really democratization you're talking. You know, Yes, you've opened it up in that private citizens have gone up there, but it's such a small number who can afford to that,

it's not really democratization. Well, so we should ask the question, are these prices ever going to come down? And if so, how how can we make it cheaper for the average person to go to space. We need to know why is it so expensive to start with the FRA In order for it cannot be cheaper, we have to know why is it so expensive? Yeah, so one of the things is rockets, right, Yeah, they're not cheap. They're not cheap.

The American Space Shuttle Endeavor cost some one point seven billion dollars to build um and NASA said that each launch of it costs some four hundred and fifty millions. And I gotta tell you, guys, the ice maker on the Endeavor totally does not work. Yeah, it's just I can't believe that you're in space. Can't you just stick water out the window? You can't, You can't. I don't

recommend drawing sticking your whole arm outside the window. But and and the thing is is that is that four fifty million dollar expenditure is relatively low really when you consider the lifetime cost of the entire program though, of the Shuttle program overall, it's been estimated at a hundred ninety two billion in two yeah. Yeah, and that would put the average cost per launch from th at some

one point five billion dollars. Yeah. Now, if you're talking about just launching a vehicle costs that much, that would go a long way to explaining why a ticket aboard any of these experiences would cost, you know, that huge amount of money. You're you're not if you're talking about

paying a government agency. So, for example, the space the private astronauts we talked about in the last episode, they were all going through Space Adventures, which was coordinating with the Russian Space Agency, right, While the Russian Space Agency is a governmental agency that was looking to offset maintenance costs, and so this for them was a way of offsetting that that expense. Space Adventures obviously took some sort of cut.

We have no idea how much of a cut they took, but they took a cut as as coordinating this whole thing between the astronaut and the Russian Space Agency. But if you're talking about a private company that is making its main business as taking people from Earth into space, they have to be able to offset all costs and

make a profit. Right. That's assuming that they're operating a business the way we traditionally want a business to run, which is that you are generating enough revenue to offset all your costs so that you're making a profit at the end of the day. Well, if you're talking about something that's this expensive, that explains why those tickets had to be so high. Well. And and people have given a lot of flat to NASA about the amount that

they've spent on their Shuttle program. Um numbers aren't really available for the Russian space Shuttle program. Russians are not terribly communicative when it comes to that kind of thing. Yeah, but they've been rumored to cost as little as forty five to eighty million dollars per launch. That's uh, yeah, significantly less money. Yeah. And and you know, like SpaceX

can send the Falcon nine. It advertises being able to send the Falcon Um up for for sixty million or under sixty million, even for the record space x is one of the private space companies right right, Elon Musk founded, right, although those are unmanned, um and they are still in

testing phases for the manned Dragon capsules. Uh with it, I mean it's it's you know, they they've got they're supposedly going to be doing some safety tests as early as Q two in so that's pretty exciting, But those would still be unmanned because they're still not entirely sure that the reason that they want to do some safety tests is to make sure that um, if things start exploding, that they can kind of throw the people to safety. Sure this isn't an early stage and yeah, yeah, no,

it makes perfect sense. Yeah it. As it turns out, rockets specifically are incredibly expensive. They're expensive to build, their expensive of fuel, they're expensive to operate. Uh. When you listen to our last podcast when we're talking about the suborbital flights, and they were much lower in price. Part of that is because you're talking about a lot of aircraft that are launched from other aircraft. Right, They're not

the piggyback game. Yeah, exactly, they're not. They're not launching from by a rocket from the surface of the Earth. And then have to reach escape velocity and then get out of Earth that way. So one of the big expenses is not really a concern there, you know, you don't have the have to worry about the rocket stuff. So yeah, I mean, as it turns out, getting into space pretty pricey, right, But this is a problem that people are working on. I mean, it's it's to everyone's

advantage to to bring these costs down. Sure, yeah, yeah, I mean everything from being able to do research and development to other types of scientific endeavors. Obviously, if you're able to lower that financial barrier, then you can do a lot more stuff, right right, You can start actually funding the projects, right instead of just getting them up there. Okay, so so some of these high costs involved. I mean, you know, first of all, the startup costs are just

absolutely crazy. I mean you have to be astronomical. Oh dear, um, you have to worry about regulations. I mean, first we have to build a regulation industry for this sort of thing. Yeah, well, I mean startup that's a problem for any new technology, right when you talk about people to space, it's it's more than doubly so but yes, well, there you have to do extensive testing and stuff because you're dealing with

human safety. But with any new tech chnology, there's going to be a problem with not not many other people are doing this yet, so you don't have like a lot of standardized parts you can use and stuff like that. Sure.

I mean like Elon Musk when he was working on SpaceX, talked about how when they were first looking at getting rockets from the Russian Space Agency, that they'd be quoted a price for something like, you know, five rockets will be twenty million dollars, and they would agree upon that price, and then they would go to Russia and they would say, oh, no, I'm sorry, it's twenty million dollars per rocket, and suddenly your your prices quintupled. Right, You've not had a hundred

million to get those five rockets. And he said that the problem is that there weren't a lot of other places you could go. It's not like you had any alternatives. You you had a very few number of players in this game, so that was part of the problem. Although he's definitely invested in SpaceX to try and work around that now. Right, Sure, and and that's one of the big things that people are talking about, getting you know, allowing for multiple launch providers and vehicles, um, so that

you can cut down on on launch failure costs. For example, well about nine uh only about of launches are successful, um, the the other ten percent having to be taken down for a few days in order to uh, you know, figure out what went wrong and to get it back up there, get it up safely. So when we're saying that there's a ten percent failure rate, we're not telling catastrophic failure right, certainly not um, You're you're not looking

at the challenger happening of the time. Of course, then again, a catastrophic failure on a rocket is much worse than a catastrophic failure on a toaster. Yes, absolutely, And that is one of those things that that one of the reasons why testing is so expensive for this kind of thing. Um. I mean also when you're dealing with equipment that has cost you a few hundred million dollars to put together and it does go wrong in testing, that's that's a

more that's a bigger setback than again a toaster. Um. But but but once you get multiple manufacturers working in this field, and uh, some some industry standards for how to build these parts. Uh, you know, you're you're not going to have the example of um, of a single company creating all the parts for something like with NASA back in the day. One of those big famous reasons why stuff got so expensive for NASA so quickly was that these companies that were making parts for them had

basically gone out of business and all other sectors. They were only making parts of the Space program and uh, and no one else had the technology to make them, so they can determine what the prices NASA would have to pay it because it wasn't an alternative. And and furthermore, their costs of creating this stuff was we're way higher than they otherwise would have been because they weren't doing

anything else to make income happen. Um. But you know, there was that one time that I think NASA had to buy some stuff on eBay because they ran out of parts and no one was making them anymore. Yeah, it's it's not not the most useful A lovely little Yoda cookie Di Spenser. What they needed was like an out of print grateful dead boot leg LP from the nineties seventies, a lot of black light posters to go aboard the I s we're very quickly disassembling this serious

podcast anyway. Yeah, but there there are other problems with rocket launch, include the fact that you've got a lot of like material and part waste in it, right, you don't have enough reusable parts and materials. Like there's this idea of the single stage to orbit rocket. You've heard of this, right, that it's a single vehicle that can launch itself into space without having to just basically throw

the rocket away and let it fall into the ocean. Yeah, if you could get some reusable tanks for stuff like that, then that would or or even better recycling processes would be much better. But as far as i'm a where, no technology like this has been even close to realize. No, they're thinking really hard about it, but right now it's it's all right in those early dangerous testing stages. Also, just infrastructure, you know, we would need to add a lot to either I mean to make it really cheap.

If could add something to existing airports or or spaceports I guess um, uh, space centers, then that would help out a lot. But you know, we don't have the capacity to send tourist flights up. You know, one of the ones I like to talk about is um Spaceport America, which is in New Mexico. Real thing, Ill, I'm not joking, yea Spaceport America. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, it's it's a thing. So that would be a rare example. You guys are

looking at me like I'm crazy. It really is. Never sounds like we're usually looking at you like you're crazy, but it's it's really, it's really a spaceport that's been built for commercial uh space endeavors. So it's you know, look it up. It really, I've got believe you. So anyway, it's it's um, that's a that's a rare example of someone getting together, raising the money and building out something from the ground up that is not an additive for

facility on something that pre exists. Right, So, like you're saying, that's the exception of the rule because to do that costs even more money, right to just build the place where the spacecraft are gonna take off and land. Yeah. So okay, So so people are working on solutions to these problems, and Joe, I think that you had some numbers on how that's going. Yeah, I'm gonna quote from the abstract of a paper by Powell Maze and rather that I'm going to refer to in a minute here.

But what they say is, quote, despite decades of efforts to reduce rocket launch costs, improvements are marginal. Launch cost for l e oh, for cargo is about ten thousand dollars per kilogram of payload, and to hire orbit and beyond much greater and human access to the I s s still costs about twenty million dollars for a single passenger. So that sounds like absolutely no progress at all, or maybe marginal progress depending on inflation. Right, can you take

inflation into account? We have, uh, we have made progress, but it is hard to illustrate because the actual amounts it's like that race that you get that is almost it's supposed to be that whole cost of living. Um. Yeah, So all right, so this is depressing. What other alternatives might we have to this whole really costly rocket business. Well you might have seen that video of a frog that had been on the side of the rocket and

tried to hitch a ride up. I don't recommend that that that is still I I feel really bad for that frog, and it is still one of my favorite photos. So it's also still rocket, still rockets. But but but if you're hitching a ride that's free, that's what hitching means. There's no such thing as a free rocket. Okay, okay, so non rocket space launch. How do you get into

space without a rocket? Well, being there already is great, But be born and born on the surface of the Earth from Earth to space, in fact, not just the space, but to orbit, because that's what really matters. So right now, we don't really have a way of doing that, but we have several ways that kind of border between science fiction and science fact. Like the principles we understand and we think, you know, on paper, we can get them to work. Whether we can ever make them practical is

a matter of engineering. Yeah, So we've got hundreds of really interesting ideas on how to do this, but none are proven. So space elevator obviously one of our favorites. We've talked about this before on the show. Right. The idea is that you've got a essentially a line that is anchored at two points. One is on the surface of the Earth, somewhere on the equator, and another one is in on an anchor that's in orbit around the Earth.

So you've got this tether that connects the the anchor point that's around orbit to the Earth to the Earth surface, and then you have an elevator, a device that can climb said tether from the surface of the Earth all the way out to the anchor point out in space, where you would then be able to launch off into wherever you need to go at a much lower cost of energy because you don't have to escape the Earth's gravity, you don't have to have that escape velocity because the

elevator has done all that work for you. Yeah, and uh. In contrast to the figures we cited a minute ago, the numbers that usually float around or that people estimate the space elevator would cost about a hundred to four hundred dollars per pound, but significant total estimate, we don't really know because there's nothing and we don't know how

expensive it would be to build. So when you take into that that that lifetime cost or if it's even possible, because we don't know that we can find anything that will have the tent stile strength necessary to be able to to provide that tether. And of course people really like saying things about carbon nanotubes, so well, carbonano tubes may not even have the tense stream. They are stronger than diamond, but they may not have the tin cil

strength necessary to be a viable cable. There are some other possible alternatives that are even stronger than carbon nanotubes, but all of those are are uh materials that are so experimental that we're able to Yeah, you're able to produce like a one atom thick strand of it, which obviously would not work for something like an elevator tether. Okay, are there any cookie non rocket launch ideas out there that don't involve exotic materials of something? Heard? Let me

talk about a launch loop. A launch loop. Yeah, this was one that I had to read. I had to read for about an hour. It sounds so crazy, it's pretty crazy. So alright, so a launch loop, imagine that you've got a really long um they call it a sheath. Think of it as a a tube. It's an enclosed tube in which you are able to create a vacuum. So it's a hyper loop to space. Hyper loop to space is it's not totally wrong, but that's a little it's a little different. You don't have a little air

air bearings to go on. So yeah, but think of a tube. So you've got a tube that's got a vacuum inside of it. Uh. And also inside this tube is a second tube. This tube is made out of iron. It's called a rotor and it's uh. You use magnets so that it ends up being suspended within the first tube, right, because irons, you know, uh, ferrest materials. You should do that. So you you create this system where the iron is

essentially floating within the confines of this sheath. Then you use electro magnets, linear motors essentially to start um spinning that iron rotor within the sheath. Once it starts spinning, that's going to create angular momentum, which will actually cause the sheath to rise up into the air if you

start spinning it fast enough. We're talking super fast, so fast that uh for a four thoul in kilometer length sheath in in one loop, uh, the iron would make a full revolution in six minutes for four thousand kilometers UM. That's really fast. So you're going super fast at that speed it rises up this this it's anchored at the on the earth at two points um. Some cables actually are also anchoring it so it doesn't fly into the wrong shape it eventually, at around eighty kilometers, ends up

becoming more or less parallel to the ground. It also has to be somewhere close to the equator, probably on the ocean somewhere. Uh. You would have two stations that would be elevated, UH, the East station in the West station. You would travel from the west to the east. So the way this would work is, first you would catch essentially what would amount to be an elevator UH that would climb the cable up until you got to the

West station. For the West station, you would then board a capsule which would they be propelled across the length of the of the the cable that's like two thousand kilometers long. At this point toward the East station. Along the way, you would reach orbital velocity and be released out into space, where then you would use whatever your capsule's UH propulsion mechanism is to orient yourself properly and

then go on your mary little way. UM. This sounds crazy to me because the amount of energy you would need to move that much iron, essentially four thousand kilometers of iron that fast, would be equivalent to what you would see in a nuclear explosion. UH. You would be using these really super powerful linear motors to to achieve that. But I can't imagine where you get all that power, And if something bad happens, I can't imagine what the

fallout would be. And now granted it would not be a nuclear explosion, there's no nuclear reaction going on with this purely physical. Also, you would have to worry about heat if any leak happened along that sheath. Uh an air got in those little bitty air molecules which would seem to be harmless to anybody, are going to interact with that rotor moving at incredible speeds, generate tons of heat,

and then you have a catastrophic failure. Yeah, this all sounds like like obviously you would be using a lot less fuel from that capsule, you know, from this from this great height into orbit itself. But the an energy expenditure, you wouldn't really be saving anything. I don't think from well, yeah, it supposedly takes less energy to operate it. You would have to operate continuously. I can imagine how you would turn it off. If you've turned it off, that seems

like it would collapse. It would start they're supposed to be The designs also involved parachutes, so that if the thing does turn off, that it would parachute down because otherwise you're talking about you know, four kilometers of iron falling to the Earth's surface or possibly if it breaks off, could go into orbit. Um. But it's yeah, it's not uh.

And the whole thing, by the way, your capsule and everything it connects to this cable, uh as a like electromagnetically, So it's not that you it's not like it's got a little hooks Like the first time I read it, I imagine one of those uh if you've ever played with one of those really old race car tracks where the car went on to a hook, like the car that there was nothing special about the car. It would just hook onto a little hook and the hook would

travel the length of the track. That's what I imagined at first. But no, it's electromagnetic. It's not actually a physical connection. But um, the more I read about this, and I don't pretend to understand everything about this, I'm not an engineer, and a lot of the stuff I read was I mean, all of this is really hypothetical or you know, at best theoretical. Um. I have a real hard time believing that this would be something that

that could be achievable. I I think just getting it to uh to the right elevation would be really challenging because you're talking about something that's mounted on platforms out in the ocean, and you would have to start it off at a very gradual speed and then build up speed to have this thing elevate to the right height based upon that angular momentum. I have a real hard time imagining all of that. I mean, it's it could very well be in the realbot possibility. It's just beyond

my understanding it does. It's something about the the picture of it in your brain seems so violent, you know, just the movement of that much mass around in the loop. It seems crazy for that reason. But then again, I mean I'm no engineer. I I couldn't really judge, but it does seem pretty wacky. Yeah, so let's talk about something else. Let's talk about something that is perfectly feasible, like shooting people into space with magnets. There are all

different kinds of ways to shoot people into space. Okay, so there is this concept of something that's like basically a space gun. It's just like a cannon that you could shoot something to try to achieve orbital French film that covered the Yeah, the problem is, of course, that creates way too many G forces and would kill you your your skull, your skull would liquefied, just like an event Horizon. Lauren remember that movie. I do remember that movie.

And so there are other ideas that are like, well, what if we could do a similar concept. So the goal is to throw you into space, right, So yeah, to get talking about Bob's big boy with an arm that's cocked back to get you going so fast that you just by your own momentum, escape Earth's gravity and achieve orbital velocity. Um. So wow that that seems like that would require a lot of speed, and it does. But if they slowly work you up to that speed,

you could do it well. And again they're talking in this case, you're talking about a a mag lev approach. Yeah, yeah, I wanna cite one specific example of the general mass driver kind of approach, and this is the Star Tram. So again we're talking about a system where you have a vacuum or near vacuum tube, so you've cut down on air resistance, so that's no longer a factor. No, I can explain it here is Uh, I'm siding from a paper maglev launch ultra low cost, ultra high volume

access to space for cargo and humans. And that's uh the paper are referred to earlier by Powell, Maze and rather. And so basically the proposed star tram system is like an orbital launch version of a maglev train. UM. So, a magnetized capsule containing cargo or passengers is accelerated by electrically powered magnetic propulsion through a ground level tube that's been pumped free of atmosphere. Uh. And so you think about it like basically a giant vacuum pipe. So it

is kind of like we referred to. Yeah, we referred to the hyper loop earlier. Hyper loop is low pressure, but this would be total vacuum. Is close to it as we could possibly get, right to be near vacuum. Um. And so super conducting magnets on the vehicle push outward and they keep the vehicle from touching the inner walls of this giant tunnel. So you're not losing speed due to friction. Right. It levitates magnetically just like a maglov train. It's floating in the air, and so that helps it

achieve virtually unlimited speed. There's no friction to hold it back. Um. And Meanwhile, the tunnel sends pulses of current through aluminum rings along the length of the tube, and this pushes the magnets on the vehicle to accelerate it. Um And Yeah. So, like I said, there's basically no limit to the speed as long as it remains in a vacuum or near vacuum.

And eventually the spacecraft attains speeds greater than eight kilometers per second or about five miles per second uh and is blasted out the end of the tunnel like a bullet. Uh And with the help of a very modest rocket burst, it makes its way to low Earth orbit. Yeah. And also, by the way, if you happen to be where near that other side, you don't want to be anywhere near it because you're gonna get some sonic booms. No, they they say that this thing should come out in an

unoccupied area. Um. And so what they proposed is a two stage system. So the first implementation is generation one, and that's easier, but it's only okay for cargo and uh. Generation two would experience less G force trauma, so it would be okay for humans. And the way Generation one works is that it can just frankly, it can just accelerate along the ground and then run up the side of a tall mountain and that's all they have to do. Um and the authors think that this is doable by

ideal funding, but that's probably not gonna happen. That would be uh, Generation two cannot go up the side of the mountain. Why, Well, what happens when you come out of the tube from the vacuum tube to suddenly a place where there's air hit You hit air, which imminately means that you hit resistance. Yeah, so you're gonna decelerate and you're gonna heat up. Yeah, you're gonna slow down and heat up really fast. That's fine for cargo, but if you've got people in the capsule, the g forces

of doing that could kill them. Um. So what it needs to do is it needs to be magnetically levitated up higher, higher and higher until the end of that tube is about twenty kilometers or twelve point four miles up off the surface of the Earth. And it dis

blows my mind. Yeah, so what what Basically what they say is that the twenty kilometer exit is doable through magnetic levitation, So you've got dual maglov here the capsule is suspended in the tube by magnets, but then the tube itself is suspended by magnets over the surface of the Earth. And this is a dual system, so it's got super conducting magnets pointing in both directions from the

bottom of the tube and from the track along the ground. Sure. Now, this is where I have a real hard time imagining this, because I'm trying to imagine the end of a tube that's suspended twenty kilometers above the surface of the Earth, that has uh magnets powerful enough both in the tube and along the ground beneath so that the tube remains

uh yeah, right, yeah, levitated. Because you know, I don't know what angle they're talking about here, Like I can't, I don't know what distances we're talking about, right, I would imagine it's probably a fairly aggressive angle, because you know, I don't I don't know why you would have a gradual angle to get out of the Earth's orbit. That would mean that your track would have to be incredibly long. So I imagine that it's probably a fairly aggressive angle.

Kind of similar to um and not necessarily like straight back like you would be if you were on a rocket. But no, it's much more gradual than that. Oh is it. Yeah,

it's angle. Well, I mean, I saw I have some illustrations here, but I don't Yeah, I don't know if the illustrations are are actually just makes me think like it's certainly not vertical, because if you're talking about going out so that you're twenty kilometers high, keep in mind the uh that that side of your right triangle is going to be the longest side, right, that's the distance down and the distance straight back to the point of origin are going to be shorter than that that angle. Yeah,

you're essentially at the hypot noose. Um. It's you know, it's hard for me to imagine how powerful those magnets would have to be to keep it suspended. I'm sure it's possible. It's just one of those where I'm thinking, like, man, don't wear any ferrest material. Yeah. Yeah, So they address this in the paper. So they say that it's going to be lifted up by the magnets and it has to be held in place for stabilization by tethers to

the ground. Um, and so what what they say is that the launch tube has high current superconducting cables that magnetically interact with the second set of high current sc cables on the surface beneath, and that creates a levitation force that it's several metric tons per meter of two blink. That's a quote from the paper. And what they say is that that levitation force is greater than the weight of the launch too. I understand that, I just don't

understand where they're getting the energy to do. When you start putting it this way, I'm starting to think that this whole space elevator thing has a lot of promise because they see the superconducting. Also that the problem with superconductors in general is that most of them have to

be super cooled to work, right. You can't just there are very few superconductors that work at quote unquote warm temperatures, and by warm, i'm talking about hundreds of degrees below uh, freezing, but but still not at absolute zero, not at absolute zero um although although I mean people are working on that technology as well, but right now it's happening in you know, like the nano to micro kind of escape. So yeah, it's just it's just I mean, I'm sure

it's a possibility. Again, it's one of those things like the launch loop. It's very hard for me to envision based upon my admittedly limited understanding of superconductors and magnetism. Yeah, so even if we believe they can do what they say they can do, the authors of this paper themselves suggest that the generation two one, the one that will provide human passengers, so that's the one relevant space tourism,

will cost sixty seven billion dollars um. But put that in contrast with something that they also cite, which is that the launch volume of this would make it worth it because it could pump out three hundred tons of cargo and four hundred thousand passengers a year. Yeah, so

that make it up in volume. Yeah yeah. And and for for that kind of system, that's not a very expensive cost at all, So I you know, I look, yeah, so I again one of those things that that if they can get the engineering to work out, then that

would be amazing. I mean, uh, I think I think this would be truly an awesome site to behold, just the just the levitating track that extends twenty kilometers into the sky alone with yeah, yeah, for for the record, like Mount Everest is about eight kilometers up, so if that gives you any kind of earthly idea. So all of these non rocket space launch ideas, they sound really cool, but at the same time sound like, how is that possible? Over and over again. When you look at these, it's like,

that's really interesting. It seems so implausible. I don't want to say they can't do it, because I think they should go for it. I mean, I'm all four people researching methods like these, but for now, maybe we should turn back and try to focus on Okay, let's say these ideas like the space elevator, launch loop maglev. Uh, let's say they're twenty to thirty years away. Let's say they're not. Let's say that they are actually as implausible

as they sound. O Um, what are some ways that we could practically reduce the cost of space tourism if we're stuck with with basically still pretty expensive launch costs. Okay, so what you're saying is the cost of getting someone up into space has remained the same. So we haven't magically found some way to make rockets super cheap. Sorry, Oh no, no, well, just you know, yeah, how can we make it cheaper um for travel. Okay. So yeah,

let's let's hear some ideas. Okay, So we can't if we can't affect the cost that's going to be incurred at the base level, then how can we make the ticket price lower? Joe? You you seem to have an idea. Well, it's not my idea, But how about a lottery? Are you right now? I'm bad at math. I like lotteries, and you did not participate in the last office lottery idea. You are so correct, And they bought the ticket two blocks away, so it was one of those moments where

like the winning ticket was bought near my office. I'm talking about a lottery that's better than one for money. This is a lottery to go to space. Buzz Buzz Alter and his voice support for this idea. I want to give a quote that he gave to Popular Mechanics in two thousand and eight. He said, I want to increase the opportunity for more people UH to share in going to orbit. I think I can establish a controlled, legal, highly productive, random selection of small investments by people, and

a selection process that works like a lottery. The experience that you can win is non transferable, that means you put it named down, you buy a ticket, and that person has to use it or lose it, so you can't scalp your ticket. Really good, thank you, thank you. Yeah. So I think that that idea makes a lot of

sense to me. So you could have well, there there will obviously still be rich people who can afford to pay the costs to get a guaranteed ticket to space, but there will also be plenty of tickets that you can put up for lottery. So you could buy a ten dollar space lottery ticket. Unfortunately there's a night teen point nine million dollar convenience fee. I'm just thinking that

buzz Aldrin would work like ticketmaster. Nice. No, no, yeah, but no, that's a great idea, this idea of sure, you know, you know, you're buying a chance, and that chance maybe determined by how many other people are participating in that particular lottery, right as sure, And in the same way that many state money related lotteries go to fund the state education system or something like that, the money that you would be putting in would be going

to to awesome stuff, I mean space research and sending one of your fellow human people up for that kind of experience. That's pretty cool exactly, And I think one thing that's cool about this is um so obviously we'll still mean that most people who buy a ticket won't get to go, but what it will mean is that not everybody who goes is going to be somebody who's filthy rich. I'm gonna go ahead and call DIBs here.

I volunteers tribute lotteries here. So I just wanted to get my word in there before for all the tickets are sold. Nice, thank you. So yeah, I mean that's kind of an interesting idea. Again, we're obviously you're talking about how this does not truly offset the cost of getting someone into space directly. But again, if you have a lottery that's successful enough, then just through the sheer number of tickets you've sold, you've managed to offset that.

That's a fantastic idea. I very much support that idea. And I want to talk about another one. Okay, Uh, this is one that I mentioned in the video episode I wrote about this. Uh, how about doing research? Yeah, every single person, as far as I can tell, every single person who has gone to the I S S as their private astronauts has done some kind of scientific

research while up there. But if you take it a little bit further, if you really do volunteers tribute to have to go up for for scientific purpose, you want to find out what the effects of space have on a tubby podcaster, I am a perfect subject for that. I hear zero gravity restores hair growth. Hall, don't tease me, Joe, that's a dragon. Have been chasing along time just got in here, you guys. I'm fine with being bald. It's beautiful, y'all. No, no,

but no, thank you. I appreciate that, but no. Richard Garriott is a great example that truly an evangelist for space travel and that uh, well, there there aren't any hard and fast figures that are absolutely verifiable. There are a lot of estimates that are out there that suggests that the work he did and he talks about, you know, the fact that he did perform scientific experiments while aboard the I S S may have offset his ticket price

by a significant amount of money. Now, granted, we're still talking about, you know, a potential thirty million dollar price tag and a six or seven million dollar uh reduction in that because of the work he did, but that's

still kind of a proof of concept. Now, if you were able to perhaps have a private company that created a program where people could apply to be the next pioneer, you know, the next private astronaut, and they're going to be continuing on some sort of scientific research in the process. Maybe that would bring things within the range of more people, perhaps not your average traveler, but at least lower that ceiling a bit. Right, So, Richard Garriott was able to

offset part of his costs with scientific research. But the thing about him is he's not like a PhD scientific researcher. Is it like a like a professional. He's a computer games programmer. I mean it's smart, grant super smart, but no scientist. Not to knock him at all. I just

mean that that's an example physicist, right that. I think that your average person with the right amount of training, I'm sure could be authorized to do useful research in space, especially if they document everything in a way that makes sure, okay, we can rule out errors. And I agree that. I still think that if you are secretive enough, when you're the corporation and the real experiment is finding out what happens to the person you know, you can give them

any busy work and it's fine. Um. I think that would be really cool. In fact, for some people it might even enhance the experience if I were going to go to space making a contribution to be able to do research in space. I mean, I don't know if we talked about do we mentioned earlier how much of a premium there is on zero G space? We did, We we kind of alluded to it, but we didn't

really go into it. Yeah, I mean, there's there are a lot of industries that are looking at using zero G environments to do all sorts of testing, everything from medical testing to designing various prototypes and yeah, just about

anything you can imagine, all these different industries. It's an invaluable resource and it's the most limited resource we have right now because you have one option, really, which is to go and work on the I S S and that that is an incredibly shortlist of people that are allowed to do that. And aside from science, this could be a really worthwhile event. Sure, coming back to money, actually, this could make economic sense in the long run, um

if we work out exactly how to do it. Back in NASA and the Space Transportation Association put together a whole report on what they thought about this potentially future burgeoning space tourism industry, and they pointed out that travel and tourism are one of the world's largest businesses. Gross revenues in the US alone exceed like four hundred billion

dollars per year UM, so not too shabby. And if you can expand that beyond the you know, into into the limitless reaches of space, then this, this could make us some money. The scope of the project, you know, would would have to be worthwhile in order to kind

of cash into that. Um. There was another really good report done in the mid nineties by the Japanese Rocket Society that looked at all of the costs and development of this kind of program and what exactly would take to make it profitable um and they estimated that to be financially feasible, UH, space tours and program would need over fifty vehicles and would need to embark on tens

of flights every day. Although tens of flights to space is still a lot of I mean, you know, it's it sounds ridiculously low, especially when you consider that commercial flights do some you know, three million passengers per day. Yeah, flying to Duluth is a little different than flying to the moon. It is. But but once you they were

saying there, it's about the same. Well in either way, you know that the relative merits of Duluth aside um, people aren't going to be spending these millions of dollars on on a trip to Duluth anytime soon. Um. But if you could get that number down to something slightly more reasonable, something like like twenty dollars per flight, This report from the Japanese Rocket Society was was saying that at that cost, they were looking at generating over ten

billion dollars per year from the sort of industry. Um, So it could, it could. In theory, it almost becomes a chicken in the egg thing, right, because you're like, how how do you get up the money so that you can end up creating the business that will then allow you to create the money so that you can continue to grow the business. Um. I mean we're talking about a brand new industry that's growing on something that has been established but not put to the purpose of tourism. Um.

You know. I I still remain optimistic. I think that we are going to see successful space tourism industries. I hope that we see it soon. Like even if we're talking just suborbital. Just suborbital seems so dismissive. It's still an incredible achievement. But assuming that we can see some real success in the coming year, uh and and next couple of years, I'm really hopeful that this actually does

become a real industry. I would love to be able to go up into space and that experience that phenomenal. And these these initial reports we're talking about this kind of thing being feasible by about and that was back in the mid nineties, so I think that that was um I mean, you know, consider in the state of the industry at the time, that was a pretty ambitious estimate. However, we've made such wonderful advances in the past ten years that I wonder if it's still a thirty year rollout though.

I mean, we do have those rolling rollouts right the whole in thirty years that will happen in twenty years alive. We do, we do. But I think that some of the some of the numbers that the companies that are looking into this have have stated have been similar, and and it's clear that people like Richard Branson, people like Jeff Bezos, people like Elon Musk are very serious about this.

They have made huge strides toward it. It's not like they came up with a crazy plan, did a little bit of work and then said, Yo, this is way too hard. Now they've stuck with it. I mean Virgin Galactic is a great example, and that that was something they were hoping they would have their first flight sub orbital flight in two thousand seven didn't happen. They're still working on it, but they in they've already had another test flight. They that they're determined to make this work.

So that gives me a lot of hope as well, because I know that when people put their minds to something, uh, it's it's pretty much impossible to stop them from doing it eventually, right, I mean, if they're determined to do it, it's gonna happen unless the very laws of physics themselves deny it and get a sonic screwdriver in there and you're good to go. So um, Well, I know that we've talked a lot about the the barriers and obstacles that are in the way. Remember that and forward thinking.

We always like to acknowledge the fact that there are barriers and obstacles, but we don't let that discourage us. Right, that's just something else that we take into account when we start to think about the future, and it's not this is what's going to prevent the future from happening. It's this is something we need to remember when we're working toward that future. So, you know, I'm really excited to see where this goes in the next few years, and I really do hope that sometime in my life

I'm able to take advantage of this. Uh In may mean that I'm going to have to sell a limb, but I'm gonna figure it out. It's gonna happen. So actually make you cheaper to take into space way less. Yeah, so that's a good way to lose lose ten pounds really quickly. Alright, So guys, if you've enjoyed this, make sure you go to our website, f W thinking dot com. That's where we have all the videos, we have the blog posts, we have the podcast episodes. We've got lots

of content there. It's really awesome. You should go check that out. Also, remember you can follow us and interact with us on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus with f W Thinking where all of those come and be part of this conversation. Tell us what you're excited about in the future. Maybe we'll even be able to do an episode about it. We're really excited with the exchanges we've had with our audience. It's

been fantastic, So keep up the good work, guys. You guys are an inspiration to us and we hope we can help inspire you guys, and we will talk to you again really soon. For more on this topic and the future of technology, visit forward Thinking dot Com Problem brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places