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by jessriedel 5560 days ago
> That's less than $200k to lift the mass of a 180lb human.

Before anyone tries to estimate how much space tourism will cost, remember that the actual weight of humans will make up a tiny fraction of the total weight of any orbiting hotel. Probably need to multiply by an order of magnitude or two.
1 comments
benl 5560 days ago
Yes, indeed. And even disregarding the mass of the destination and of the ferrying craft, the mass of life support systems and consumables for each individual on the way up and down are likely at least double this anyway.

But, longer term, consider what happens if/when there is existing infrastructure in LEO and highly productive and profitable work for an individual to do there. The cost of actually getting to LEO will be a relatively minor relocation cost, even at these numbers.

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jessriedel 5560 days ago
> consider what happens if/when there is ... highly productive and profitable work for an individual to do there.

What productive work is there to do in LEO? I can hardly think of any, and NASA was scrapping the bottom of the barrel looking for worthwhile science to do on the international space station.

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hugh3 5560 days ago
Longer term you'd hope for another order of magnitude reduction in launch costs. If SpaceX can make a fully reusable Falcon 9 as Elon Musk has said he really wants to:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2009/01/musk-ambition-spacex-...

then we can start looking at paying ten times less.

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