Sorry, wrong on all counts. :) I will say that one of the reasons I'm skeptical about space solar power is that (IMHO) to make it feasible will require using materials mined from space rather than shipping everything up from Earth - that makes it much more speculative. Others disagree on that. OTOH, solar panels seem to last a lot longer in space, and the sun is always shining. On the third hand, I see a lot of political difficulties.

Mining asteroids for aluminum or iron for use on Earth is not likely to make economic sense for a long time - it's true that shipping from orbit down to Earth is much cheaper than shipping up, but it's still not a win. But other materials do make sense. If you review the plans of Planetary Resources, you'll find that for several rare materials - platinum being the most famous - mining asteroids _potentially_ makes good sense - it's still highly speculative. But the folks who are pursuing this are used to high risk high reward ventures. Platinum mining today is a filthy, dangerous, extremely expensive, environmentally and socially disastrous enterprise. It's almost certainly cheaper to get platinum from an asteroid than from the present mines, even with the terrific cost of the initial infrastructure.

Here's a useful quote, from Wikipedia:

"Famously rich" above means, in the "Merensky Reef" zone of the Complex, approximately 10 parts per million of Platinum group metals - that's the whole group, not just Platinum - can be found. This means that a gram of Platinum must be extracted from more than 100 Kg of ore. This is by far the richest part of the richest mine on the planet. Other active mines are processing ores with much lower concentrations.

The top line on all this is that commercial space development is already reducing the cost of space launches. SpaceX is launching for 1/4 of the price of prior vendors, and forcing the prices of every competitor down. Their reusable vehicle technology has the potential of significant further reductions. We still need additional cost reductions, ideally an order of magnitude. There are methods with that potential but it's hard to say which one(s) will get there.

I should add - 'the company' is Integrated Space Analytics LLC, for which publication of analytical and reference data via the poster, the website, and subscription is the business.

Nope. The company's primary business is analytics and our primary interest is not defense but commercial space, particularly start ups and privately held companies that may become public. We are all 'space nuts' who have been working to advance non-government space for a long time. (Except me - I've been doing bleeding edge computer stuff most of my career. I've been more of a space groupie.)

We are doing this project because we think it's important. Development of space as an economic resource has more potential to 'fix' many of the biggest problems here on Earth than anything we can do down here. We are doing what we can to help make that happen.

"There be dragons out there" - and beyond them, the New World.

Rumor has it that Planetary Resources has already found a good target asteroid for their mining plans. If they are successful, the price of platinum may drop from $1500/oz or thereabouts to $10/oz, turning it from a curiosity used in expensive jewelry and (in extremely small quantities) as a surface in catalytics converters into an industrial metal with huge numbers of valuable uses.

Space Solar Power (which I'm somewhat skeptical of, mostly for reasons having to do with the politics of Earth) has the potential to replace every thermal power plant - nuclear, coal, oil - within 100 years, and providing enough power to allow all cars to be electric, thereby removing most of the present day sources of air pollution.

An economist a few years ago analyzed the potential effects of space development, and concluded that it had the potential to improve the standard of living of everyone on Earth by a factor of 10 within 100 years.

With that level of activity, even with the great number of robotic systems in use, the number of humans in space will gradually increase, and the cost of bringing them back to Earth will become more than the cost of keeping them up there in good health. And space habitation will become permanent.

Indeed. I think this might be a very useful part of the project. I'll include it in the plan! And hopefully you and Geoffrey will participate!

It all takes planning. The Space Shuttle took nine years from initial plan to launch. It took almost 10 years of a crash program to get humans to the Moon. We do need cheap access to space, or at least cheaper. SpaceX was founded in 2002, and now after 13 years is only a year or two from launching a human into space. And those are single programs, not an entire movement.

But in a larger sense, you are right. Our approach to the new Plan is that there are many entities, each doing their own thing in a combined cooperative/competitive manner. Rather than trying to do a huge, fixed 'top-down' plan like a centrally-planned economy, we think it's more useful to use an ecosystem approach to the Plan, letting each independent entity find its own place. In this approach, our Plan can provide valuable information to entrepreneurs looking for a niche, and companies and national agencies looking for partners, customers and vendors. And they can all both see and if desired help to determine the long term view. This is, if you will, an 'organic' approach to planning.

But don't discount planning, engineering, documentation and obsessive attention to details and avoiding anomalies. Space will always be a very dangerous place, ready to kill you with a moment's inattention.

Even Columbus was a part of a much larger, longer term initiative. I quote:

The basic goal for the Kickstarter is in fact for the poster - we are committed to making this poster a common sight. The primary purpose of the poster is to get distributed to schools, offices, homes, and dorm rooms and publicize the present state of the 'art' of space, and inspire folks about this great endeavor. So, after the various costs of Amazon, Kickstarter, and various other things, the money is primarily going into actually making and shipping the posters.

This is going to require substantial research and quite a bit of work, first generating the database, then constructing the draft layout and then refining it to a real production quality poster. Not least is the actual cost of printing and distribution. Last night we were reviewing the cost of shipping internationally - we've had some requests. We'll try to do something about that, but that's really expensive.

Then, once the poster is done, that same data will become an initial component of the database for the website. The website will only get significant funding from this Kickstarter campaign if all of the poster costs are satisfied, as a stretch goal. The website should be self-supporting in the long run, but in the short run even though we can set up the basic website and the basic data processing engines ourselves, we will have significant costs.

We are already spending money on web services and evaluating both free and commercial software, and talking with vendors about sponsorships. Much of the advanced linked data and visualization software is open source, but even so the development of the system is a significant labor commitment, and we'll need a cadre of people to run it, as well as to provide help with the vast quantities of data collection and updates. We are evaluating the possibility of using Amazon AWS and other cloud services to support what we hope will be rapid growth in the use of the system.

I, and many others, have thought about this quite a bit. During the period when activities and people in space are still dependent on Earth, Earth politics will be controlling the policies. So for example, it might be that mining on the visible side of the Moon would be restricted.

I forget the name, but an economist came out a year or two with an analysis of the potential of space development. The result was that, if things like asteroid and lunar mining and space solar power are successfully developed, within 100 years the mean standard of living of every person on earth could be increased by a factor of 10. I'd be OK with 1.5 or 2. I'm somewhat skeptical of space solar power myself, mostly due to the political difficulties, but technically SSP could eliminate all ground-based power plants, nuclear, coal, or oil, and provide enough power for the entire automotive and transportation fleet to be electric. (I don't see how that would work for ocean shipping, but hey.)

It's not an ideal comparison, but the "discovery" of America turned Europe from a relative backwater to the colonial powerhouse of the later centuries. Without American resources, Europe would never have become what it is today - the global language, if any, might be Swahili, or Mandarin, or Hindi, or maybe Russian.

I've been told that the B-52 planes flying today have almost no original parts in them - everything has been changed out, improved, updated. The fleet is right now undergoing a complete remake of tthe flight controls, with a new glass cockpit. Those are physical planes, not just plans. And tecchnology has come a long way - the new SuperDraco motors on SpaceX Dragon are 3D printed, saving something like 70% of the cost.

But you are right to an extent. In the original Plan, the Space Shuttle was in there, taking parts up to what became the ISS. The original Atlas rockets, upgraded and modified in many ways, are still in use - but they use Russian engines. Today's space community, or industry, or whatever, now includes China, India, Japan, and over 30 other countries. Ecuador and Costa Rica have space programs, small but active. So the new Plan will use elements of the old Plan, but will also have new threads and new technologies, and must have a different focus on space as a global endeavor.

One minor hope is that by showing the increasing interrelationships across national boundaries, and by showing new supply chains, a new Plan may help international cooperation. That's a tall order, but it's not without possibilities.

I hit 'submit' too fast ... I'll be reading your papers later tonight. I am glad to know about them. We may want to include links to them in the website, and we'll also be assembling a community of folks who are advising or otherwise helping build the system.

The NSS roadmap has a different focus, as does Dani Eder's Space Transport and Engineering Methods Wikibook. This wikibook is a good basic reference to the many technologies related to space, so we want to incorporate links to his work to allow folks on our website to learn more when desired. Dani supports our project, and has graciously allowed us to include references and links to his work in the Plan website. With permission, we can incorporate multiple roadmaps as part of the website or by reference, and provide useful links between roadmap elements and the projects that are related to them. This is just one way in which the website (which will be at the "thespaceplan.com", which presently points to the Kickstarter page), can become a comprehensive resource.

As an aside, every member of Space Finance Group is also a member of NSS including two or three past NSS officers, and I believe that NSS supports this effort though I haven't seen the paperwork myself.

There's a link to Maker Magazine there. And the original link. And somewhere here is a link to the BBC program ... ahh, here 'tis. This program inspired us to offer a "huge" version for schools.

Now see, if your school had had a poster on the wall you'd know better! :)

No, we did the commercial, you can see it on the Kickstarter page.