Quote Originally Posted by wiggin View Post
I don't really get people who think it's ever going to be economical to have SF-level populations in orbit. Even with wildly optimistic assumptions, SpaceX is still probably going to have costs on the order of a few hundred dollars per pound to get to LEO let alone GTO. That's dirt cheap by many standards, meaning satellite launch will be much easier and relatively cheap. The key word here, though, is 'relatively'. It will still take large amounts of money to put people in space on an absolute scale, and we're never going to have millions of people traveling there on a regular basis without a step change in technology (e.g. elevators or catapults or the like)

Cheaper launch costs are great, and I see them being valuable for developing outer space industries - e.g. Trojan asteroid capture and mining, space stations and crewed missions for exploration, etc. But while Earth orbit and the solar system might get a bit more crowded, it's almost entirely going to be unmanned. Space tourism and the like will be the preserve of the very rich.
Agreed, though the modular smallish hotels like Bigelow Aerospace suggests do make sense, as a vacation for the (very) rich. It'd probably be a lot cheaper than buying your way onto MIR, and people did that (just looked it up, they expect about $30 million for the flights, and $25 million for a 2 month lease of a third of their station - very pricy, but I bet some people are willing to pay that, and it would presumably get cheaper over time). But yes, more importantly it can be used for any commercial use in space, while being cheaper and more available than, say, the ISS.


- Just looked up what people previously paid for orbital tourism, seems to be $20million - $40 million, for maximum 15 days.