Recently, my colleagues and I wrote a paper discussing the possibility of starting space industry in the next few decades, affordably and rapidly using a “bootstrapping” approach. Since the work was done by government employees, the content (other than formatting by the journal) is not copyrightable, so the following link provides a downloadable preprint of the article:
Preprint_Affordable bootstrapping of space industry and solar system civilization
The final, published version (copyrighted, with formatting and with slight edits compared to the preprint) is available for purchase from the ASCE, or can be obtained through most university libraries:
The paper was mentioned in a blog post on the White House website, here:
Bootstrapping a Solar System Civilization
I discussed it more fully in a series of interviews with Elizabeth Howell at Universe Today, here:
Building A Space Base, Part 1: Why Mine On The Moon Or An Asteroid?
Building A Space Base, Part 2: How Much Money Would It Take?
Building A Space Base, Part 3: Making Remote Robots Smart
Latest posts by Philip Metzger (see all)
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[…] on building everything on Earth, and launching it into space. A different model championed by Dr. Philip Metzger, would develop industrial capacity in space, using resources close to home, such as from the Moon. […]
The key to opening up space is cheap and frequent launches. Right now we don’t have that. You have to book a rocket months in advance and it costs north of $10,000/Kg. How do we fix this? Both StarTram and Skylon hold great promise. StarTram projects $50/Kg. That will do the trick. Let’s build it. Ecuador is a perfect location.