----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Minette" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2000 11:22 PM
Subject: RE: Space Station
>
> --- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "dendriite" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >The odds of being killed by an asteroid are greater that being >struck by
> >lightning or being killed in a plane crash. It sounds >strange, but
> >asteroids (like weapons of mass destruction) kill so >many when a fall
does
> >occur, that it greatly increases the odds for >a single individual.
>
> Well, I've gotten some numbers from a Rice University site. It is argued
> that the KT type impact, the dinasour killer, happens about once every
10-8
> years. That is a kill all of humanity type strike. Kill 1 million people
> strikes happen every 200k years. Kill 10,000 people strikes happen every
few
> hundered years. Integrate them out, and it probably is higher than a one
in
> 250,000 chance...which is the likelyhood of being killed by lightning.
You are saying 24,000 people are struck by lightning each year. Cuz if its
per lifetime the stats are not compareable. That would be 1104 just in the
US per year and even that seems pretty high.
I heard this reported several times on the radio and TV with no rebuttal
(about the likelihood of being killed by an asteroid), so I have doubts
about it being highly inaccurate.
>
> >
> >I disagree. The vast amounts, availability, and sometimes even the
>purity
> >of materials in asteroidal bodies is going to make the first >people to
> >exploit them incredibly wealthy.
>
> But they are only available if you spend millions upon millions for each
> kilo brought back.
The scenarios I have read over the years generally state that you could move
more metal to earth orbit than has been mined on earth for X number of years
at a cost lower than it took to mine it all on earth. How true that is,
depends on how much orbital infrastructure exists I would think.
Using todays figures for launches is shortsighted when per pound overhead is
predicted to drop by a factor of 10 when newer launch utilities come on
line. Already there are folks trying to apply something that resembles
Moores Law to space flight, But I would agree that is likely to be overly
optimistic. The Nasa site had some nice stuff regarding this at one time,
but its been a while since I've checked it out.
> Launch costs per kilo have not gone down much since the
> '60s, remember.
This will change.
xponent
rob
