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Comment by helsinkiandrew | Hacker News Reader

It is possible, perhaps even 10 or 20 years ago, But it isn't economically feasible. You could build or refurbish the ISS into something that looked a Japanese capsule hotel 'fairly cheaply', but getting there still costs millions, we are thousands or 10s of thousands of spacecraft away from making them cheap to produce and run.

Hotels on earth aren't exactly money spinners and apart from the zero gravity and looking at the earth the novelty of being in space would probably wear off after a day or two. Projects like Virgin Galactic - for a 'near space' fun ride will probably be more lucrative in the short term. Getting (government funded) astronauts and satellites into orbit is where the money is right now.

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LEO is ~10$ per kg in fuel. Given a similarly reusable vehicle space travel could be relatively cheap.

The economic issues are more about how space flight has been funded than the underlying physics. The space shuttle for example had some terrible tradeoffs relating to which orbits it could achieve and needing to return cargo etc. SpaceX has dramatically lowered the cost to orbit, but they don’t have the funds to explore dramatically different designs.

And we need a transportation that is much more economical than rockets, otherwise it will always be very costly to lift a kilogram into space.

Actually rocket fuel although very old fashioned doesn't seem that costly.

Falcon 9 flight to LEO costs $200K in fuel but can lift 22,800Kg. If a person and their seat could be squeezed into 200Kg that's only $2K per person. I think the biggest cost is that the forces and extremes of temperature mean the 'rocket' needs to be engineered and maintained very well as any small failure is likely to be catastrophic - its very hard to abandon ship or divert to the the nearest airport.

Rockets aren't inherently expensive. Air travel would also be prohibitively expensive if the aircraft was disposed of at the end of each flight.

If SpaceX's Starship plans come to fruition, the $/kg to orbit cost will fall dramatically.

Not to talk about the environmental impact!

Not necessarily that high with methane fuel. The exhaust is CO2 and water, and you can make it from water, CO2 in the air, and clean energy.

And potentially near-zero emissions with hydrogen/liquid oxygen rockets. Of course, methane rockets probably ends up having lower emissions in practice due to hydrogen typically being produced in methods that emit CO2.

Ultimately, even if we massively increased the rate of rockets being launched, the greenhouse gas impact would be pretty minimal compared to cars, electricity, and cement production.

But what is economy anyway ? Recent events showed us that money was not economy, you can print as much as you want and 'helicopter' it.

It is more about the resources, do we have enough of it to make it possible for regular people to travel to space ? Probably not on earth, so let's build mega factories on the Moon. You might argue it's not possible or feasible for some physic reasons, so let's find a solution. But not money, money does not exist, it's made up.

The purpose of humanity as I see it is not to go smoothly and safely, to be able to go without troubles to a final destination (that does not exist). I say buckle up and let's do it! As Billy said you need to be solution oriented.

> the novelty of being in space would probably wear off after a day or two.

"I could get used to a view like this" - Flynn Ryder

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