How much $ would it cost to retire to space??

[gabemcg]

Had this discussion over the course of a day with some friends.

Lets say that a person has a Net worth of ~$70 billion, and wants to retire to orbital space full time, in a space station that has all the amenities of home, and then some...

They would need to pay to:

-design, engineer, and produce a suitable launch system, shuttle, and space station

-staff all of these institutions full-time

-keep a stock of all needed expendables (fuel, ect.)


I think that they could definitly afford to do that with $70 billion, but perhaps I'm way off...

If there seems to be a general consensus that it would not be possible, than would it be do-able in this respect?...

-Hitch a ride with the Russians, or on Space Ship One.

-recruit investors, and technology partners that will help for free, with the incentive that they have rights to any commercial intresets that may develop as part of the program.

-Offset costs by building a Space Station "Resort" that is capable of housing several extremely wealthy guests at a time. By doing this, almost all cost's associated with the program would be write-offs; would they not? Plus, they could charge almost anything they wanted, for an all inclusive stay in a 5 star space resort. someone would pay it.

 

[CycloWizard]

There is a private investor building an orbiting hotel... It was in Popular Science probably six months or so ago. If someone is smart enough to collect $70 billion, they're probably smart enough to spend it to accomplish this if they want to do it and even turn a profit.

 

[Gibsons]

Originally posted by: gabemcg
Had this discussion over the course of a day with some friends.

Lets say that a person has a Net worth of ~$70 billion, and wants to retire to orbital space full time, in a space station that has all the amenities of home, and then some...

They would need to pay to:

-design, engineer, and produce a suitable launch system, shuttle, and space station

-staff all of these institutions full-time

-keep a stock of all needed expendables (fuel, ect.)


I think that they could definitly afford to do that with $70 billion, but perhaps I'm way off...

If there seems to be a general consensus that it would not be possible, than would it be do-able in this respect?...

-Hitch a ride with the Russians, or on Space Ship One.

-recruit investors, and technology partners that will help for free, with the incentive that they have rights to any commercial intresets that may develop as part of the program.

-Offset costs by building a Space Station "Resort" that is capable of housing several extremely wealthy guests at a time. By doing this, almost all cost's associated with the program would be write-offs; would they not? Plus, they could charge almost anything they wanted, for an all inclusive stay in a 5 star space resort. someone would pay it.

You'd probably need to custom design and build a series of heavy launch vehicles. BIG suckers. Because for your permanent home, you're going to want a decently high orbit, and lots of "stuff," like radiation and meteorite sheilding, redundant systems, escape pods, artificial gravity (meaning you'll want to spin it). Since it's a luxury place, you'll need the extra weight for things like windows, recreation areas, etc.

Spaceshipone is a long long long way from a heavy launch vehicle, at this point in time, big rockets are still the best way to move stuff.

I don't know if 70 bils gets you there...

 

[Drostie]

I wouldn't be surprised if ion drives became more cost-effective within the next 20-50 years. If they took over rocket propulsion, the fuel needs would go way down. If you don't have plans for reentry, the execution might only be a couple hundred million dollars.

70 billion dollars should do the trick. I think that's something like twice what NASA gets yearly.

 

[Valkerie]

Anyone insane enough to do this is out of there mind.

However, I'd say 70 billion dollars sounds about right.

Mediocracy to whoever decides to do it.

Bill Gates is too humble to do anything this dumb.

 

[Mojoed]

Originally posted by: Drostie
I wouldn't be surprised if ion drives became more cost-effective within the next 20-50 years. If they took over rocket propulsion, the fuel needs would go way down. If you don't have plans for reentry, the execution might only be a couple hundred million dollars.

70 billion dollars should do the trick. I think that's something like twice what NASA gets yearly.

The real problem with Ion drives is they have a very low thrust to weight ratio. An Ion drive would never be able to escape Earth's gravity. In fact it would not even come close to leaving the ground fully powered and with zero cargo. Thus ion drives would never be suited for blast-off from Earth. Their real purpose of an ion drive craft is for to piggy-back a ride on another space vehicle and begin it's journey from space at zero gravity.

Here is a nice comparison between rocket and ion propulsion.

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I think this would be possible now with a budget of 70 billion. Once the living quarters are designed and put into orbit there would be the issue of maintenence and supplies which could be contracted out to various governments.

I think SpaceShipOne was a nice first step in the right direction towards space tourism, but if people realistically want to live in space, we are first gonna have to come up with some kind of propulsion a few orders of magnitude more efficient than our best rockets. That in my opinion, is the biggest hurdle. I hope this occurs in my lifetime.

 

[Calin]

You should add to the mass that a nice station would have in orbit the mass a nice swimming pool will have in orbit. At one ton per cubic meter, you are looking at a big payload

 

[Vegitto]

Dude, 70 billion. Who in their right minds would spend that kind of money on a HOUSE?

 

[Pabster]

Definitely not Bill Gates.

 

[unipidity]

No. You would have to design it to be fully functional after at least 25 years (im assuming you are getting top notch medical care when your 80). ISS + shuttle flights are about that expensive, and ISS aint big, nice or long term enough.

Maybe in 50 years time.

 

[Siddy]

2050, the earth will be so poluted, the global elite will retire to space, we will die.

 

[Deepstrike]

Merge this topic with the Saddam super gun topic ;-) It'd be interesting to lift the soft, squishy stuff (like astronaut construction workers) using conventional methods, but huck the raw materials into orbit using some sort of rail gun that runs up the slope of Kilamonjaro or some other suitable sloping large mountain near the equator. You could probably even fire the water for your pool up if you froze it in your 'shells' before firing them. Even better, the first part of the space station is a kind of catcher's glove that catches the shells and simultaneously increases it's orbit. Anyways that's my wild ass guess, lol.

(Although I keep reading blurbs about space elevators but those sound like they're a long ways off [40+ years] assuming we could even build/maintain/operate one. [Even aside from the feasability it'd just be something else for other human beings to blow up for reason/cause x.])

I think it could be done with 70bil. Without some pretty radical changes it wouldn't exactly be the Hilton in space. If I had 70bil I think I'd have the construction crews consist of 'last chancers' who were willing to take higher risk orbital flights in return for much higher pay/benefits for them or their their families (if they had any). Then depending on the amount of money saved from reduced costs of 'man rating' the rockets, either lift more stuff into orbit or make a moon colony sort of project to manufacture all of the construction mats locally. Economically/feasibly it'd probably be cheaper (and certainly easier) to just build one in orbit. Anyways, fun to contemplate but not exactly a pressing issue.

 

[TheoPetro]

who the heck would want to.....i mean after a year or two dont ya thing it would get a bit (like increadibly) boaring? your only scenery is the earth and the moon and some planets and meators. ya it would be pretty neat for the first part but i think after a year id get sick of it

 

[eLiu]

Originally posted by: Vegitto
Dude, 70 billion. Who in their right minds would spend that kind of money on a HOUSE?

it's in SPACE man...OUTER SPACE!

 

[Valkerie]

Originally posted by: eLiu

Originally posted by: Vegitto
Dude, 70 billion. Who in their right minds would spend that kind of money on a HOUSE?

it's in SPACE man...OUTER SPACE!

Outerspace, and who's gonna talk with you, your dog? Where are you gonna go to the mall? How about hang out with friends? Like someone mentioned earlier, scenery? Big blue ball, white ball, yellow ball? Bunch of stars? You have to admit that stars would look much better when viewed down from Earth. Shooting stars, you can still see them from Earth. Honestly, very boring I must admit. You'll become anti-social, where you gonna get your talking on, a chat room from space? The idea is is great, but I'd like to see someone do it from ages 30/40-70. And see how psycho they become, ofcourse in the state of psycho fanaticism, you probably won't notice anything anymore.

 

[Valkerie]

Originally posted by: Valkerie
Anyone insane enough to do this is out of there mind.

However, I'd say 70 billion dollars sounds about right.

Mediocracy to whoever decides to do it.

Bill Gates is too humble to do anything this dumb.

***edit: Unless ofcourse he finds out that Xerox is offering another version of an OS that will help make him something else, again.

 

[Deepstrike]

Yeah, but if they could eventually make their own 'colony' (even with less than 30 people) then it might be more compelling. Being able to found some 'utopian' society in their own vision of social structure, laws, morals, whatever. They could probably recruit some people for that without too much effort. People have tried those kinds of social experiments earthside so why not in space where you create your own jurisdiction rather than residing in someone elses?

Also, in some ways it could be kind of like a bomb shelter in space... Super plague/war/nukes toasting every thing on Earth? Just hope you get up (or already are) there before the ish really hits the fan. Although that wouldn't really work unless it was 100% self sufficient, which isn't very likely at this time.

 

[unipidity]

Hahaha. Thats a good one. Cut out most of the redundancy in the life support etc. Launch from some African country that doesnt care. Hahaha.

Space elevators, as I always say, are a bloody stupid idea.

 

[grant2]

Let's take a logical stab at this:

- The costs of design & materials are negligible. A few million here, a few million there. For 2 billion you can probably get everything together including your engineering, architecture, electronics, transport ship, and a dozen engineers hired for life.

- That leaves $68 billion you can spend on launching into space. Space shuttles can carry approximately 28 tonnes into orbit, Nasa pays $1.3b per launch, which is about $46 million/ tonne. Inversely, we can get about 20 tonnes of mass in orbit for every billion.

- So how much mass will a good home cost? Skylab weighs 91 tonnes, and seems to be as habitable as one of those tiny japanese apartments. Let's assume we can rip out all that useless scientific gear and make it as comfortable as a small 1-bedroom apartment. Of course, we're north americans dammit and we want luxury so we'll multiply that by 6 to give us a kitchen, spare bedrooms, the grotto, etc. This will also include 6x as many solar panels to accomodate our widescreen TV... so roughly 550 tonnes. To get it upstairs, we'll be in the hole another 25 billion.

- Now we're down to $43 billion, and the hard work is done... but... what about retrieving supplies & guests? At $1.3b/launch, it may not be practical to get fresh mandarin oranges sent up every xmas... you would run out of money in about 30 years. At this point, you would look into a partnership with NASA or some private agency which plans to make regular space flights anyways. At only $100m/tonne, they would make a nice profit and you could haul up more supplies than you'll ever use in a lifetime (guessing that a person can consume less than 1 tonne of items a year, there's 430 years' worth of trips in the bank account).


Best guess, can it be done? Yes, easily.

 

[BK12321]

I would be the first man to have sex with a million women if I had that money, although I would also have STDs out the ass it would be fun.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

You are missing a point here... it's been speculated extensively that a zero-g environment may provide a realistic life-expansion chance... especially if you don't plan to return... someone in their old age or suffering from a serious disease would surely pay all this money and even more, just to have a few more years at their disposal. Fear of death can be a powerful incentive.

 

[vegetation]

I'll take a stab at this from the financing point of view: not going to happen, no matter how rich the individual is. Remember, it's money on paper and while they can cash out hundreds of millions of dollars, that's not enough to start the endeavor planned here, as no serious investor support would ever be provided for such a project.

 

[Leros]

You wouldnt be able to receive top notch medical care in space, so you would die younger anyway.