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>I wonder if this would be an opportunity for Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable modules? Not just Bigelow but many other space startups. SpaceX is dominating the

>I wonder if this would be an opportunity for Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable modules? Not just Bigelow but many other space startups. SpaceX is dominating the news atm with Blue Origin to follow but the reality is that the big bucks are in space activities not space transportation. This is only now starting to be realized with companies deploying fleets of cubesats for Earth observation but in the next decade there are plenty of companies that are looking to build commercial space stations. Some of these projects are more conservative, like using technology proven on the ISS coupled with cheaper components and more streamlined operations. These 2 factors combined with the fact that these are not cost plus contracts with the government mean at least an order of magnitude of cost savings. Then there is Bigelow who wants to move to the next stage of inflatables but also the Gateway foundation who want to launch the materials in space and assemble a huge station there. Everybody is waiting for the price per kg to drop to a certain threshold and then cheap human transportation to be made available. Crew Dragon is probably the first step towards that that might enable some small station but the big deal is BFR( when and if it launches).

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> the big bucks are in space activities not space transportation This is an opinion, not a fact. They are presently in transportation. Moreover, the space mining and manufacturing pitch has been made (incorrectly) for at least forty years. I have yet to see a convincing business model for any of these activities, even assuming cheaper launch costs.
- frgewut 8y ago
  Actually launch industry is minuscule compared to satellites ($5.5B for launch industry vs $13B only for satellite manufacturing) Edit: and then of course there is the satellites services which the report estimates in hundreds of billions $. [1] https://www.sia.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/SIA-SSIR-2017.pdf https://www.sia.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/SIA-SSIR-2017...
  - nscalf 8y ago
    42% is minuscule? They have reasonably comparable market caps considering the amount of time the industries have existed. The commercial launch industry really is in it's first/second decade (arguable depending on what you define as commercial, this field is radically changing), and you can trace satellite commercial use back decades to the 70's with GPS and telecom (the first satellite tv use was in 1978 for reference).
    - frgewut 8y ago
      Of course satellite manufacturing is only a small part of the satellite industry. I updated comment to reflect that.
    - barbecue_sauce 8y ago
      Even by their original figures, wouldn't it be 30%? 5.5B/(5.5B + 13B)?
      - perl4ever 8y ago
        The point is, to some people "miniscule" implies different orders of magnitude.
- HeadsUpHigh 8y ago
  I'm talking about LEO activities right now. Satellite operators per year make way more than the satellite launch market is.
  - Retric 8y ago
    Lowering launch costs will dramatically reduce the value of stuff in orbit. It’s the brutal math that hammered the telecom sector through the 90’s and presents a major risk for the next few decades. Ex: If you pay 1000$/lb to get something into orbit and your competitor waits 5 years to get better stuff into orbit at 500$/lb that means you need to lower prices while still paying back the same loans.
    - HeadsUpHigh 8y ago
      It doesn't work that way. If you paid 1k$/lb now and the competitor waited 5 years you got 5 years of profits which easily accound for 4 or 5 rocket launches on today's costs. Satellite operators make millions/day of operations.
ohyes 8y ago
And frankly, it must be stopped. We can’t have loads and loads of space junk floating around in near earth orbit. Space isn’t the internet, you “can’t move fast and break things,” and you can’t just create more of it. We have to be careful and systematic and decide exactly what is important enough to be placed into orbit. Having a high cost at least prevents a glut of crap being put up there, if it doesn’t necessarily prevent meritless things from being launched. Someone has to say humbug to this before the Lords of Silicon Valley screw it up and make the rest of us pay for it.
- AlanSE 8y ago
  Poorly placed comment when the parent was discussing things like cubesats. Tiny satellites like these are probably better in the long-run for orbital debris due to a number of reasons. Firstly, by virtue of being smaller, atmospheric drag is greater and their decay is faster given a certain orbit. Second, they're more disposable than the larger sats, meaning lower orbit more economical when weighed against the capital cost of the mass-produced device itself. The real problem for debris is higher orbits that don't decay after a reasonable service life. Those just accumulate forever. On that subject, you would have a point for things like SpaceX's recent idea of putting up internet satellites, because those would be slated for orbits higher than more LEO missions, and would involve a large number of heavy objects there effectively on a permanent basis.
  - close04 8y ago
    Atmospheric drag affects small satellites more than large satellites, all other things equal?
    - navaati 8y ago
      I think it's more than as you go smaller the mass reduces faster than the drag, thus resulting in a higher amount of drag per unit of mass.
      - nradov 8y ago
samstave 8y ago
What I think will be a very interesting development is when we scale a DaVinci Surgical robot from Intuitive to be remote-hands in the assembly of space things. If we can have people simply logging into a davinci-style-space-avatar who can get about to do the tasks required to assemble things, and have the dexterity of these robots have, that will be an interesting step. Another thing that shold be interesting is whomever develops the first orbital hangar. If we were to start by sending up components which get lego-ed into a platform onto which we can attach things we are building, and the robots we build them with - then we will be able to develop a repeatable method of bolting things together in space. Given that (from my ignorant perspective) the only real limiting factor to any space-born craft is the size and shape of the componentry which can be launched from earth to orbit - it would seem that just ensuring your minimal denominating factor is fitting into the weight/dimensions of the payload capabilities of the launcher. Then, ensuring that things have a standard way to fit together would be great, but if not - use a davinci style romote-arms for the fine work... Or is that all just naive daydreaming?
- Terr_ 8y ago
  > What I think will be a very interesting development is when we scale a DaVinci Surgical robot from Intuitive to be remote-hands in the assembly of space things. Most of that kind of surgery is done in the same room, so dealing with latency will be a major issue. (I know there have been some experiments in long-distance tele-surgery, but it's hardly routine.) A low-earth-orbit installation (like the ISS) has a variable latency depending on where it happens to be and what chain of relays and other systems are being used. A geosynchronous satellite would have predictable latency (~250ms round-trip) but it'd be more expensive to launch and service at that distance. Anywho, I think "remote satellite work" will involve heavy reliance on pre-programmed sequences, "simulate locally, then send for execution remotely" tactics, and just generally structuring the manufacturing process to minimize any steps that can't be done atomically with pausing-points in-between.
  - samstave 8y ago
    Yeah, I was more referring to the dexterity of the bots than anything else.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> the big bucks are in space activities not space transportation This is an opinion, not a fact. They are presently in transportation. Moreover, the space mining and manufacturing pitch has been made (incorrectly) for at least forty years. I have yet to see a convincing business model for any of these activities, even assuming cheaper launch costs.

frgewut 8y ago
Actually launch industry is minuscule compared to satellites ($5.5B for launch industry vs $13B only for satellite manufacturing) Edit: and then of course there is the satellites services which the report estimates in hundreds of billions $. [1] https://www.sia.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/SIA-SSIR-2017.pdf https://www.sia.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/SIA-SSIR-2017...
- nscalf 8y ago
  42% is minuscule? They have reasonably comparable market caps considering the amount of time the industries have existed. The commercial launch industry really is in it's first/second decade (arguable depending on what you define as commercial, this field is radically changing), and you can trace satellite commercial use back decades to the 70's with GPS and telecom (the first satellite tv use was in 1978 for reference).
  - frgewut 8y ago
    Of course satellite manufacturing is only a small part of the satellite industry. I updated comment to reflect that.
  - barbecue_sauce 8y ago
    Even by their original figures, wouldn't it be 30%? 5.5B/(5.5B + 13B)?
    - perl4ever 8y ago
      The point is, to some people "miniscule" implies different orders of magnitude.
HeadsUpHigh 8y ago
I'm talking about LEO activities right now. Satellite operators per year make way more than the satellite launch market is.
- Retric 8y ago
  Lowering launch costs will dramatically reduce the value of stuff in orbit. It’s the brutal math that hammered the telecom sector through the 90’s and presents a major risk for the next few decades. Ex: If you pay 1000$/lb to get something into orbit and your competitor waits 5 years to get better stuff into orbit at 500$/lb that means you need to lower prices while still paying back the same loans.
  - HeadsUpHigh 8y ago
    It doesn't work that way. If you paid 1k$/lb now and the competitor waited 5 years you got 5 years of profits which easily accound for 4 or 5 rocket launches on today's costs. Satellite operators make millions/day of operations.

ohyes 8y ago

And frankly, it must be stopped. We can’t have loads and loads of space junk floating around in near earth orbit. Space isn’t the internet, you “can’t move fast and break things,” and you can’t just create more of it. We have to be careful and systematic and decide exactly what is important enough to be placed into orbit. Having a high cost at least prevents a glut of crap being put up there, if it doesn’t necessarily prevent meritless things from being launched. Someone has to say humbug to this before the Lords of Silicon Valley screw it up and make the rest of us pay for it.

AlanSE 8y ago
Poorly placed comment when the parent was discussing things like cubesats. Tiny satellites like these are probably better in the long-run for orbital debris due to a number of reasons. Firstly, by virtue of being smaller, atmospheric drag is greater and their decay is faster given a certain orbit. Second, they're more disposable than the larger sats, meaning lower orbit more economical when weighed against the capital cost of the mass-produced device itself. The real problem for debris is higher orbits that don't decay after a reasonable service life. Those just accumulate forever. On that subject, you would have a point for things like SpaceX's recent idea of putting up internet satellites, because those would be slated for orbits higher than more LEO missions, and would involve a large number of heavy objects there effectively on a permanent basis.
- close04 8y ago
  Atmospheric drag affects small satellites more than large satellites, all other things equal?
  - navaati 8y ago
    I think it's more than as you go smaller the mass reduces faster than the drag, thus resulting in a higher amount of drag per unit of mass.
    - nradov 8y ago

samstave 8y ago

What I think will be a very interesting development is when we scale a DaVinci Surgical robot from Intuitive to be remote-hands in the assembly of space things. If we can have people simply logging into a davinci-style-space-avatar who can get about to do the tasks required to assemble things, and have the dexterity of these robots have, that will be an interesting step. Another thing that shold be interesting is whomever develops the first orbital hangar. If we were to start by sending up components which get lego-ed into a platform onto which we can attach things we are building, and the robots we build them with - then we will be able to develop a repeatable method of bolting things together in space. Given that (from my ignorant perspective) the only real limiting factor to any space-born craft is the size and shape of the componentry which can be launched from earth to orbit - it would seem that just ensuring your minimal denominating factor is fitting into the weight/dimensions of the payload capabilities of the launcher. Then, ensuring that things have a standard way to fit together would be great, but if not - use a davinci style romote-arms for the fine work... Or is that all just naive daydreaming?

Terr_ 8y ago
> What I think will be a very interesting development is when we scale a DaVinci Surgical robot from Intuitive to be remote-hands in the assembly of space things. Most of that kind of surgery is done in the same room, so dealing with latency will be a major issue. (I know there have been some experiments in long-distance tele-surgery, but it's hardly routine.) A low-earth-orbit installation (like the ISS) has a variable latency depending on where it happens to be and what chain of relays and other systems are being used. A geosynchronous satellite would have predictable latency (~250ms round-trip) but it'd be more expensive to launch and service at that distance. Anywho, I think "remote satellite work" will involve heavy reliance on pre-programmed sequences, "simulate locally, then send for execution remotely" tactics, and just generally structuring the manufacturing process to minimize any steps that can't be done atomically with pausing-points in-between.
- samstave 8y ago
  Yeah, I was more referring to the dexterity of the bots than anything else.