Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Rictor on October 15, 2005, 03:38:02 pm
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...land-line phones become a thing of the past?
I say 30 years for most countries, maybe another 10 for the poorer ones*. Though if recent history has taught us anything, it's going to be even less than that.
It's frightening to see how rapidly and how significantly the world is changing. A mere decade ago mobile phones were a rare and exotic gadget. Now, everyone has one, even in the Third World, and it won't be long before they come standard with a camera, WiFi, full colour screen and mp3/video playback. Probably act as a credit card before long, and GPS to boot.
*and by this I mean compltetely gone. A gradual shift away from fixed phones will probably happen much sooner. In fact, it's already in progress.
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Originally posted by Rictor
and it won't be long before they come standard with a camera, WiFi, full colour screen and mp3/video playback.
They already do. Maybe not 802.11g, but bluetooth and web browsers, sure.
Hell I know one girl who uses her cell phone as an mp3 player. I'd probably use mine that way too, except it doesn't have a standard headphone port.
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VoIP is going to render phone lines a thing of the past per se, they'll just become very phat internet connections that support everything from browsing, downloading, TV/Home-Cinema, and VoIP.
Costs will drop like a lead balloon, until someone comes up with a valuable addition that everyone wants but can't afford.
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The Japanese already use them for all of the above, together with internet browsing/e-mail capabilties, TV in some cases, etc.
We're just somewhat behind.
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As long as Cingular keeps providing crappy enough service for me to lose a connection every ten minutes, and as long as cell phones can't manage to have a talk time of more than two or three hours before running out of battery charge, I'll still see land lines as superior. And for God's sake, is it even possible to buy a phone that's just a phone anymore, without all that other extraneous crap like cameras, video players, and the like? :p
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For Highly Industrialized parts of the World I say 35 years or so because youv'e got to admit plain old phone lines are extremely reliable cheap and why tear up miles of good cable when you could still make a buck off of it?
For Rural and third world country parts of the world I say 60 years, because even small areas in the U.S. still don't have broadband and towers and standard lines are still reliable and cheap.
When it comes to VoIP I'll say it'll take up to 25 years to become available everywhere.
When it comes to cellphones I think sattelite phones will replace standard tower phones in the next 10 to 15 years in the U.S. 30 worldwide.
Broadband will be available everywhere in around 15 years.
That's my take on it.
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Originally posted by Mongoose
for God's sake, is it even possible to buy a phone that's just a phone anymore, without all that other extraneous crap like cameras, video players, and the like? :p
I wonder this every damn time my phone glitches and I have to consider buying a new one.
It's holding out, though. It might survive another two or three years if I'm careful with it.
It's a Sony J70e, roughly four and a half years old.
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Just wait until they find a health impact of cellphones.
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There is no health impact for cell phones. :nervous:
Yes, my head will be fine less than a mm from this radio transmitter 9 hours a day.
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The US is surprisingly behind the rest of the industrialized world when it comes to cell phone and broadband usage/availability.
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We're far less concentrated, so broadband is a lot slower spreading.
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Then why is it that even in the cities broadband is slow by other nations standards and people are charged rediculously high prices for it?
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American cable companies are bastards, and the majority of the wires are ancient.
Next question?
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I have never owned a mobile phone and I have no plans to buy one. Why? Because mobile phones do not get along with hearing machines.
Yes, my hearing is severely impaired. So far I have relied on wired phones with a speaker and even that is far from being good, especially when the other person is one of those whispering types, which is damn annoying.
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Okay, it lost my last reply.
To the cable company comment:
Our cable companies know we have the money and will pay for the service even if it is substandard. Why spend money on a costly replacement of those cables now when you can repair them until they are degraded beyond repair. At that point you can replace them with better technology than you have now.
It sucks for the customers but is cost effective for the cable company.
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Originally posted by Mr. Fury
I have never owned a mobile phone and I have no plans to buy one. Why? Because mobile phones do not get along with hearing machines.
Yes, my hearing is severely impaired. So far I have relied on wired phones with a speaker and even that is far from being good, especially when the other person is one of those whispering types, which is damn annoying.
Really? I never noticed a problem on the forums... :p
Seriously, though, there are plenty of phones with built-in speakerphone capabilities.
Anyway, VoIP + WiMAX + some tremendous unknown future advancement in battery life/capacity = the death of mobile phones.
I'm on my... 6th cellphone since 1997 right now. I've had a Motorolla, a Nokia, a Samsung, an LG, and 2 Sony Ericssons. I like Sony Ericsson the best. :)
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I have some Samsung model that came as part of the service package. It does the job. I use it so infrequently though that a single charge lasts for a full college semester (15 weeks) for me. :D
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Originally posted by Sandwich
Seriously, though, there are plenty of phones with built-in speakerphone capabilities.
Think a little about convenience, would it be convenient to keep the speaker on at all times when you make a call or someone calls you, regardless of where you might happen to be at the time? Besides, there are usually a lot of background noise outside of your home (public places) so that negates speakers effectiveness a lot. It would make little sense to keep the speaker on and loud in public places where everyone can hear your conversation. And built-in speakers in mobile phones are usually poor quality.
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the one i find fascinating rictor...is roads.....think about what we have done with paved roads in the last 100 years. that's alot of road for only 100 years, and to think they did it all with 3 supervisors watching 1 guy work.
and now we go to 20 years ago...when one of the IBM big wigs asked why anyone would want a computer in thier home.....
now let's see some real scary progress....remember the furby? that child's toy had more raw computing power than the lunar lander did. My god, we left a furby in charge of getting our men to the moon and back.
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lol furby loves you
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Originally posted by ShadowWolf_IH
the one i find fascinating rictor...is roads.....think about what we have done with paved roads in the last 100 years. that's alot of road for only 100 years, and to think they did it all with 3 supervisors watching 1 guy work.
and now we go to 20 years ago...when one of the IBM big wigs asked why anyone would want a computer in thier home.....
now let's see some real scary progress....remember the furby? that child's toy had more raw computing power than the lunar lander did. My god, we left a furby in charge of getting our men to the moon and back.
Not twenty years ago. Has to be at least 30, as IBM sold PCs since the early 1980s.
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who cares about the past live for the future.
Think about this. 50 years ago no one had been in space. There was no country with the capability of space flight. Now we are bored with the moon.
Also 20 years ago string theory, much less M-Theory were disregarded as fantasy. Now multiverse is a powerful school of thought. Gravity is even being attributed to a leak from our universe to another of this force.
Science is the ultimate advancement.
When we either create a pocket universe that separates from our own in a microsecond(but is detected) or we someone learn to measure higher dimensional interactions, I think the world will finally take note of science.
Finally, he who builds the first space elevator will rule the earth and the universe. He will be able to put up the next space elevator for 1/100th the cost of the first. That is the ultimate advantage.
The US and EU need to make it before China[ or Korea]. EDIT KOREA!!!! THAT WAS A WOOPSIE
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Korea?!
What, as in critically impoverished, people dying in the streets of starvation, famine struck North Korea?
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Without understanding the past, then you have virtually no chance of advancing.
And as for being "bored with the moon", that's a blatant lie. Funding was cut, and the remains were diverted to the shuttle, which, while an interesting concept, was actually a step backward.
And an orbital elevator is flawed, at least any we could build now. Namely, we lack any material strong enough to do it. We have some that could do it, but aren't stable (mettalic hydrogen, for example). As for building it, you know they can only be built at the equator, right?
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Come on man I am joking. We are not scientifically bored with the moon.
Politically we are.
Elevators: They can be built in the ocean. International waters. Any country can do it. Any major power could defend it.
Materials: We should pour research into it. The truth is once it was built it would be cheaper than using any other means to get to space.
We are not as far as you think from having carbon nanotubes capable of doing this.
The thing is it is not that hard we should just get off our collective asses and show some support for it.
Further, the materials needed would have an unbelievable number other uses.
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Developing entirely new materials is not easy. And carbon nanotubes are incredibly hard to make in a decent size.
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Now but we need to fund the hell out of it.
We don't do that right now.
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Originally posted by Osiri
Come on man I am joking. We are not scientifically bored with the moon.
Politically we are.
Elevators: They can be built in the ocean. International waters. Any country can do it. Any major power could defend it.
Materials: We should pour research into it. The truth is once it was built it would be cheaper than using any other means to get to space.
We are not as far as you think from having carbon nanotubes capable of doing this.
The thing is it is not that hard we should just get off our collective asses and show some support for it.
Further, the materials needed would have an unbelievable number other uses.
Some weird defence contractor guy on Somethingawful forums crushed our party with cold maths:
Steel, bricks and spider silk won't work- they would all literally snap and collapse under their own weight. Which is why a theoretical material 2 orders of magnitude stronger & lighter than the strongest carbon nanotube string ever tested is required. It's not that steel would be too large or expensive, it quite simply is too heavy and not strong enough to work EVER. But don't worry, we'll still tap the world's steel deposits dry building the 2-mile high anchor station required to support the space elevator. See, it has a real problem with vibrations, and the anchor at the ground will require the ability to move up and down 2 miles to maintain the proper tension, lest the space elevator become overstressed and snap. (They didn't mention that part in popular mechanics, did they?)
The space elevator doesn't look like the photos you've seen. It doesn't look like an elevator. The envisioned space elevator capable of lifting the same cargo as the space shuttle is about the width of a shoelace but paper thin while going through earth's atmosphere. It's tiny; it has the cross-section of a human hair. It has to because it requires a taper and to make it thicker here would require a likewise thickening in space and it becomes technically even less feasible. So, basically, you're looking at the world's tallest lightning rod that's about as large as a piece of fishing line.
Now, we all know carbon nanotubes are a conductor, but they're unfortunately a fairly poor conductor (10-4Ohm-m), about 50kOhm overall. A 400,000V bolt of lightning will be pumping the space elevator (with the cross section of a piece of fishing line) with about 3 million watts of power. Meaning that when it does get hit by lightning, it will instantly explode. Even just a small % damage will cause it to overstress and snap. Running a conductor along it is too heavy; cabling that heavy will literally weigh in the tons, which effectively means the space elevator would have no capacity for cargo. Wrapping it in a giant 10-mile high conductive tower (or anchoring it at the top of the tower) is about the only way you're going to protect it. Considering they want [need] a mobile (floating) platform so they can move the elevator out of the way or orbital debris and other hazards, this is potentially a show-stopper right here.
And some other jerk further ruined the "well what about STRONGER than carbon nanotubes HUH?!?!?!!" counter-argument:
what we know of physics is in full support that carbon nanotubes are bordering the strongest material possible. This is because they have the strongest bonding structure of any molecular/atomic structure currently supported by any and all laws of physics/chemistry that produces an actual material. In other words, to create a stronger structure that could replace the nanotubes, you would have to violate the entirety of known physics, or you have a monomolecular whip that would destroy anything it touches.
I hate maths, they crush my dreams of joy, liberation and philosophical enlightment. And pudding.
GOD DAMN PUDDING CRUSHERS
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I forget the fixes to this problem that have been suggested.
Once you get a single line run multiple others could be run. If they are all capable of supporting thier own weight plus some more weight then theoretically the more you run the better.
EDIT: see the article below... I should have said ribbon. Disregard cable and read ribbon each time. Thats what it is.
Just because a cable weighs more than a single fiber of the cable does not mean that it is weaker. Else there would be no use in making cables. I haven't looked into the physics of this paragraph but from a common sense view consider.
1 strand capable of supporting its own weight plus 50 lbs.
run 1000 more strands and yes you have 1000 times the weight but now you have 1000 times the tensile strength and it can support 50000 lb load.
I am sure there is some loss of strength in this so reduce the support by half. now 25000 lbs on the tensile.
Now run 5 more cables of equal strength. or 50 for all I care.
I am sure this is hair brained or something but could someone tell me why.
Now heres a fun thought. Consider his argument. If the cable snapped ;7 think about a fishing line stronger than steel flying through the air at 100s of miles an hour.
If it came down through a city I wonder if the tensile strength would allow it to cut through buildings.
The cable could not stop because it would be being pulled by literally tons of material on the other side of the building.
anyhow that would be hilariously horrifying.
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Here. This is a quote from space.com
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_elevator_020327-2.html
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Getting the first space elevator off the ground, factually, would use two space shuttle flights. Twenty tons of cable and reel would be kicked up to geosynchronous altitude by an upper stage motor. The cable is then snaked to Earth and attached to an ocean-based anchor station, situated within the equatorial Pacific. That platform would be similar to the structure used for the Sea Launch expendable rocket program.
Once secure, a platform-based free-electron laser system is used to beam energy to photocell-laden "climbers". These are automated devices that ride the initial ribbon skyward. Each climber adds more and more ribbon to the first, thereby increasing the cable's overall strength. Some two-and-a-half years later, and using nearly 300 climbers, a first space elevator capable of supporting over 20-tons (20,000-kilograms) is ready for service.
"If budget estimates are correct, we could do it for under $10 billion. The first cable could launch multi-ton payloads every 3 days. Cargo hoisted by laser-powered climbers, be it fragile payloads such as radio dishes, complex planetary probes, solar power satellites, or human-carrying modules could be dropped off in geosynchronous orbit in a week's travel time," Edwards said.
Using a laser beam to boost the climbers into space is doable, said Harold Bennett, president of Bennett Optical Research, Inc. of Ridgecrest, California. "If you do it right, you can take out 96 percent of the effect of the atmosphere on the laser beam through adaptive optics," he said. The strength of the pulsed laser beam is less than the intensity of the Sun, so birds, airplanes, or human eyes wouldn't be affected, he said.
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The projected cost is less than 10 billion. We are spending over 100 billion right now to return to the moon by 2018.
10 Billion is well within the abilities of Bill Gates, the Waltons, and hundreds of other individuals much less corporations.
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I believe the best plan is of a hexagonal structure using 6 cables, with double redundancy. Albeit that wouldn't solve other problems like falling ice on high-alititude parts or space debris impacts (particularly in terms of defending against that without also breaching treaties on space weapons)
I'm not sure whether you'd have even as much as 1/2 the combined weight support, though; I think that might depend a lot on the likes of weight distribution for one thing. I think a proper cable would have to be structured in the normal way of wrapped strands (IIRC this is for additional strength through weight distribution), so I doubt you could just start by raising a single strand.
The obvious issue is surely the tremendous difficulty of building and raising that amount of cable, I'd imagine. You'd likely need further research into a heavy lift capability anyways. Personally, I think a space elevator is a pipe dream in purely political - let alone technical - terms; I'd rather see more work on efficient spacecraft and new propulsion methods. After all, a space elevator can only take us so far on it's own (and yeah, I understand it's value in that context in terms of it providing a neat launch platform).
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20 tons is the projected weight of the entire first cable
and sorry. I will update the earlier post to say ribbon as it should
Also someone has tested a climber let me finish reading the article real quick
Lift Port Group is the entity I am refering to
Holy **** are these guys for real.
They are actually a company trying to do it
Lift Port Group (http://www.liftport.com)
and check out their faq and news
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Interesting. (er, not related to LiftPort. I'm not sure exactly how realistic the prospects are of a non-governmental space elevator)
Apparently, carbon nanotubes cost from 20 to (for what I presume is strongest) up to 1000 euros per gram in 2003.
So... by a very rough and assumptive calculation.
20,000,000,000 euros for the first cable. Which is about $23.9bn for the material alone; I'm not sure if there are any fabrication plants that can produce that amount of nanotube cable, and there's obviously the cost of research, testing, building the ground and space stations, and of course making the lifters.
I'm not sure how they're estimating $10bn, to be honest.
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They are building thier own manufacturing plant and it is becoming cheaper to produce them
Further who cares.
10 billion
20 billion
50 billion
once the first is up the others come at fractions of the price
you could have 10 of them for less than the cost of returning to the moon on rocket power.
BTW
if you were to go out on the counterweight
your angular momentum would be enough to launch you to the moon.
That is also included in the two websites I posted
also 20 tons is not that much weight when you think about it
The cable is 1000s of miles long
I was thinking the cable would be in the 100s of tons.
OH ya the spent climbers(the robots that reinforce the ribbon with more ribbon) become your counterweight.
you need the counterweight to keep it from becoming loose or from tiliting
also aldo, one thing you should realize is that the government of the US would instantly protect the space elevator once it became clear that a US company was going to really get it built.
This is because that company would give the government lower costs on using the space elevator.
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[q]
also aldo, one thing you should realize is that the government of the US would instantly protect the space elevator once it became clear that a US company was going to really get it built. [/q]
That's sort of my point. There's really an inherent issue in terms of not just security, but control. Would an SE be built on US territory or cheaper foreign territory (it's not stated where they - LiftGroup - plan to build this; only offshore in the pacific), for example. If it was the latter, would the US government be willing to allow the construction of it, unless they had discretionary control over who uses it, and soforth. To me there'd be a whole raft of legal and jurisdictional issues that could be a problem.
I doubt the US government would be particularly happy to pick up the tab of protecting a private SE, in any case. I guess that'd be another (significant) cost.
(I think there's potential for a 20-year, largely theoretical, plan with such a vast scope to become more of a cash sink than an actual viable company)
So I think it's more feasible to see this sort of thing by government than private industry, simply because of the red tape involved and the nature of it. Plus I have to admit a slight nervousness at the concept of such a thing being privately owned, potentially with minimal oversight.
Oh, and in terms of heavy lift; I was more thinking of Mars, and beyond type travel (not necessarily human, of course). I'm not sure, even with a space based launch platform, we have the right technology to do that well (namely quickly and efficiently). That's what I mean; is it better in terms of solar system scale exploration to spend billions developing a space based launch platform, or to spend that upon, say, ion drive experimentation. I'm not sure it's the former.
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they stated in the pacific ocean 700 miles from air traffic flight paths
Read the article.
A launch from the counterweight would actually have the momentum to get you to Mars, Venus or the Asteroids.
I didn't see anything about Jupiter so I guess that is a bit beyond this momentum.
All at $250 a lb.
That is amazingly cheap to get to Mars.
Getting back would be more difficult I assume.
The US would certainly oversight it.
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It does not matter that liftport will go under
what matters is that the research and manufacturing capabilities are actually being established.
Liftport goes under someone else take over gives it the needed influx of cash and boom it is fully privately funded.
And that new owner controls the world.
well at least until someone else puts another up.
but by then the original owner has strung 4 more and the costs are miniscule and who is going to use the much more expensive elevators of a newcomer.
That is why the first builder will control.
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Originally posted by Osiri
they stated in the pacific ocean
Read the article.[/QUOTE
Did you read my reply atall? I know they said in the Pacific Ocean, but the Pacific is not solely US territory. Like most oceans, it's actually rather large.
Originally posted by Osiri
A launch from the counterweight would actually have the momentum to get you to Mars, Venus or the Asteroids.
I didn't see anything about Jupiter so I guess that is a bit beyond this momentum.
I'm not sure I get you. Are we talking about using the space-elevator as an accelerator and just 'letting go' at the top? Or getting to the top, and then launching from there?
I've not read anything to suggest that an elevator launched interplanetary mission could omit engines. Reduce the heavy lifting requirements, yes, but not remove the need for propulsion altogether.
SELF-CORRECTION; apparently with a postulated 144,000 km cable it'd be possible to reach an exit velocity high enough to send probes to Saturn. I'm not sure about the vagarities of actually steering the thing :)
Originally posted by Osiri
All at $250 a lb.
That is amazingly cheap to get to Mars.
Getting back would be more difficult I assume.
Back is pretty minor; I don't think there's any point in sending manned expeditions at present, we'll learn as much with robots and without the logistical barriers of food, oxygen, etc.
Originally posted by Osiri
The US would certainly oversight it.
I'm not sure there is a barrier on US companies relocating their centre of operations, and if they were to shove the actual platform in international waters or non-US soil, you could be looking at some major probs there. Something like a space elevator, I'd rather have complete governmental control with UN oversight to it.
(actually, I wonder how much the likes of NASA would use such a thing, if they couldn't guarantee total control over it; is there a stated policy, US or otherwise, on the rights of individuals or companies to develop space travel or technology? I know the US army is actively working on ways to deny hostile nations use of neutral space technology (http://www.army.mil/professionalwriting/volumes/volume2/june_2004/6_04_4.html))
Incidentally, what are the practicalities of manufacturing a 144,000 km long graphite cable? I've read that you need to bond carbon nanotubes with a soft composite (i.e. graphite was the example cited) to form the length and type of ribbons needed.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is impossible - although I don;t think we're at the technical level yet to build it right now - I'm just not sure such a project is feasible for a private company given the likely international political issues, and the likely huge cost (nanotubes cost more per gram than gold).
I think it's more feasible to be by government; and I think at present it's more valuable to research new cheap propulsion technology (such as on a space shuttle replacement, probes, etc) and expand exploration than direct all this to a space elevator. Unfortunately, what is being done - namely the moon landings plan - is to me just reusing old technology (principles) and isn't actually advancing anything. So I'm not against it per se, I just don't think a space elevator is the most appropriate option for the moment.
Now, how did we get onto this from cellphones? :D
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First, it must be built in the ocean. This avoids major concerns such as accidents, terrorist attacks, weather(weird but they say so), and I think the base station must be moblie to account for slight drifts.
The US would oversight to the extent of protecting it and probably making sure that no one tried to use it for bad things.
No US corp is willing to challenge the US government in a matter like this. They would lose in an instant. Further, the added benefit of government protection would be too hard to resist.
The owners would likely allow the US government to build its own elevator using the private one to get the materials into space.
I agree that I would prefer the US government build the damn thing but the administration is too busy making plans for things they will never have to come through on.
Another thing I want to point out is that right now we are spending huge amounts of money on shuttle take offs and landings(or were spending).
The honest truth is that you could get a mission to Saturn as you say for $250 per lb or $550 per kg. It would make multiple missions that are infeasible now completely feasible. Even if it wouldn't get you to the Kupier Belt it might give you enough momentum that your convential rockets could get you out there.
Another idea is that you can put another space elevator on Mars and when you get to Mars you can again use the angular momentum of Mars to send you to another staging point.
The problem becomes how would you get more push after Mars.
I wonder what the feasibility of lower a elevator cable from high Jupiter orbit into the gravity well beneath while at the same time extending the counter weight further away from Jupiter.
If the effective gravity pull on the lower counterweight were enough to balance the outward pull of the higher counterweight, it would still theoretically be a way to get into much higher orbit where you are actually outside of Jupiter's major grav well.(where you are moving so fast you would normally be shot off into space anyhow)
This would be amazingly helpful because the speeds would far exceed the speed in orbit of earth.
Although there is then a problem of too much tension causing the line to snap.
Back to the topic though...
This would be by far the cheapest method of propulsion ever suggested.
No expensive fuels. No bombs. No complex parts. Just good old momentum.
It would be far safer. Also steering would not be as bad as you think.
Directing explosive heat out of a rocket nozzle at a certain angle pressure and etc is much harder than timing a release based on pure tragectory.
further no one ever said that the things launched from these platforms could not have engines.
IDEA.
It would be cool to have multiple space elevators launch several components simultaneously that could assemble using small amounts of force to change trajectories.
Engine here fuel there and there and there and there.
For manned missions, food there there there there there.
Crew quarters.
Since they are not moving relative to each other slight amounts of force would allow them to be moved together and using good manuvering that is currently available(the International space station is assembled like this.
You could assemble the ship after launching it at the correct momentum.
Thereby allowing you to get over the 20 ton capacity for one ship
You would thereby not need the lunar base to launch major space flights.
IMO though you would want to launch interstellar or such from mars not from earth. it would allow you to get up more velocity as you fly inward to the sun allowing you to actually reach the suns escape velocity.
You could also then use the nuclear bomb concept for propulsion
Finally, the practicalities of making a 144000 km ribbon is not as hard as you would think. If you had the funding and a manufacturing plant it would not at all be difficult.
Yes we need a little more advancment in the fibers for it to work but not very much
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I'm not denying the lauch savings of the space elevator, just the vast expenditure to build the thing. I'm not sure that's justifiable at the moment if the technology isn't yet fully proven or discovered (this is not me ruling it out for investigation, just as being the primary/sole area of funding), particularly if (purely from a governmental funding point of view) space travel is still very far down on the list of priorities.
Whether or not LiftGroup go bust (and whether another company would be willing to step in), I would still say I'm not especially comfortable with this in the hands of a private organization. I'd rather there to be some sort of altruistic motive, of course, although I guess no country would do this sort of thing 'for the good of humanity'. Might be nice to have that pretence, though.
But I think terrorist attacks, and more likely accidents, are still possible in an ocean mounted cable. Accidents on the ground would be possible as this sort of thing would have to be a major cargo hub to be viable, and in space from the obvious - debris & satellites.
In terms of US oversight.... I honestly don't know what the legal, jurisdictional and economic range of that is. Like... how much responsibility would the US take for ensuring the cable is properly maintained and no costs are cut. Or what sort of right the Us would have to veto contracts from, say, Chinese companies or government. I think it's a very muddy issue there.
Or a stupid question that occurred to me; what would happen if the owners of the cable, once built, went bust? Would they take it down? Would (a) government take over? Just curious.
EDIT;
[q]
You could also then use the nuclear bomb concept for propulsion[/q]
I don't think that's legal under UN treaties over weaponization of space. Plus a lot of countries would go ape**** over it :).
It's a shame, because Project Orion (in the 50s) was an interesting theory for interstellar (albeit very slow in human terms) interstellar travel.
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Originally posted by Osiri
they stated in the pacific ocean
Read the article.
A launch from the counterweight would actually have the momentum to get you to Mars, Venus or the Asteroids.
I didn't see anything about Jupiter so I guess that is a bit beyond this momentum.
All at $250 a lb.
That is amazingly cheap to get to Mars.
Getting back would be more difficult I assume.
The US would certainly oversight it.
Hmmmm.
The moore I dig through the endless archives of space elevator talk, the prominent it comes that
A) it is possible to build nanotubes that reach the required GPa. They almost do, but it's not enough,not by a long shot. You need to be 1000% certain, because this thing can never fail. Never.
Also, said nanotubes are very small and short, several millimeters. Not 50 000 kilometers. Ok fixable we'll produce them in no time (no time meaning years or even decades before large-scale construction can even theoreticall begin)? Of course you have to actually PRODUCE said ultra-high quality in large numbers AND in sufficiently low cost.
B) the lightning problem could be solved with moving the platform (costs like ****), coating the cable with some kind of coating (could create nasty water/particle problems), using lasers to kill the clouds (very unfeasible right now and they don't even work as intended) or use chemicals to break down the clouds (seems like the most useful one, yet cost++++. And even they don't work always).
So I back down from my "physically impossible" stance, because it seems it is possible. Theoretically possible, but practically it borders on impossible for quite some time (read: certainly not 5 or 10 or 20 years).
The technology is far from mature. We don't have the nanotubes or required magnitudes. We don't have protection for counterweight, or the counterweight, or methods to move it in case something goes wrong (these are pretty minor problems in the scale if SE).
We don't have even limited weather control. If the best solution is "let's not get struck by lightning", then yes there are problems. We don't have protection against debris or meteorites or ****ed-up airplanes or UFOs flying against the rope. Actually, we don't have any feasible protection against electronic charges and discharges in the cable.
We don't have the anchor - we don't have enough steel in the planet to make it out of it, nor has anyone come up with any feasible plans to make some kind of anchor that can flex in all directions, because that's what the rope requires.
Oh, this one is cool: This would require some groundbreaking maths, namely orbital maths and an analytical solution to an n-body problem (I am not a mathematician). That's apparently really damn hard.
Hey ho, some more. This is actually pretty fun. The cable must be kept straight. That seems to be a pretty big problem and involves A LOT of fuel because the climber will cause some problems. Pretty funky problems..
Also, there are problems using the the GEO station as launchpad - changing orbit eats up a lot of energy, sometimes even more than just packing and sending a rocket straight from the surface.
And someone just mentioned something about 2,4km/s and it has something to do with the station and the counterweighth and construction... ugh.
The guys on the SE project rely on magical breakthroughs. If you count on incremental breakthroughs, then their timeline is pretty optimistic.
And then comes the entire government vs. private corporation and economic issues. Let's see something
1. It should be located on equator. If it's being built on the ground, well, urrr, where? If on sea (seems like a wise plan), would it be on international waters or some country's waters. Someone pointed out that a potential place would be somewhere near Galapagos islands..
2. It costs. A lot. Research + development + building + getting the resources + fixing mistakes + manpower + protection... That's a nice sum.
3. It must be protected, and it costs.
4. It must pay itself back, ESPECIALLY if it's a private venture.
5. Why would a government protect it unless they had a substantial say on how it is run + nice portion of profits?
6. urgh my head
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As to your question. Corporate law of US would put it on the auction block.
Now, the vast expenditure to build it was $10 billion. That is a figure with a 30% contingency basis.(ie it will really cost 6.9 billlion but 3.1 is given for insurance)
As to your statment of what we should put money in I simply see from a different POV. Wasting money on a return to the moon will get us nowhere. We do not need to go there again. At least not right now.
The dangers to this thing have been accounted for. The point of having a mobile base station is to be able to avoid debris. Every piece of orbital debris down to a 1 cm width is supposedly known and tracked, I think that is amazing in itself. I am not sure of the reality of this but supposedly.
They can move the base station to avoid impacts of sufficient size to damage the ribbon.
US would just simply exercise imminent domain if the corporation was a US corp if necessary.
It has the power to do it and will if it pays money to the owner.
It would do this if the corp were to commit treason, or essentially do something that the government did not like. I would need to look at my Consititutional Law stuff but I am almost sure it could. I would also do this of the Corp tried to shift its incorporation away from the US.
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The ribbons do not need to be one tubule.
Read Liftports FAQ
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Originally posted by Osiri
As to your question. Corporate law of US would put it on the auction block.
EDIT: whoops, missed this :o
Can any company (i.e. foreign) buy an auctioned company? What happens if no-one is willing to take the risk?
Originally posted by Osiri
Now, the vast expenditure to build it was $10 billion. That is a figure with a 30% contingency basis.(ie it will really cost 6.9 billlion but 3.1 is given for insurance)
I seriously doubt that, myself, given the simple price of carbon nanofibre alone, let alone if they have to build fabrication.
Originally posted by Osiri
As to your statment of what we should put money in I simply see from a different POV. Wasting money on a return to the moon will get us nowhere. We do not need to go there again. At least not right now.
I don't believe returning to the moon is a good use of money either. Certainly not with their current plan, which is basically a bigger version of the 60-70s programme. But I don't think an orbital elevator should be a primary funding project with the current general apathy to space travel; I think we need something more conceptually visible and plausible in the medium term in order to even be sure of having any form of funded space programme in 10,20 years time. (in US/NASA terms; EU programme will always, I think, be lower key, but the Chinese will probably continue to push)
Originally posted by Osiri
The dangers to this thing have been accounted for. The point of having a mobile base station is to be able to avoid debris. Every piece of orbital debris down to a 1 cm width is supposedly known and tracked, I think that is amazing in itself. I am not sure of the reality of this but supposedly.
They can move the base station to avoid impacts of sufficient size to damage the ribbon.
http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/faqs.html
Based on this, only objects >10cm are tracked. Objects under that (to 3cm) can be detected on radar, but the sheer volume means that they can't be continuosly tracked.
I don't know what the time concern/movement flexibility required is to dodge debris. Or what the financial/political requirement would be for arranging tracking for that debris.
Again, I'm not saying this an insurmountable obstacle but one which means I don't believe this is currently technologically possible (if it was, then I'd say it is worthy of primary funding).
EDIT; actually, I'd say it was a serious issue more for a private than publicly owned space elevator. I guess the odds on an actual impact could/would be pretty low, but you'd still need to be 100% certain to find and detect them.
Originally posted by Osiri
US would just simply exercise imminent domain if the corporation was a US corp if necessary.
It has the power to do it and will if it pays money to the owner.
It would do this if the corp were to commit treason, or essentially do something that the government did not like. I would need to look at my Consititutional Law stuff but I am almost sure it could. I would also do this of the Corp tried to shift its incorporation away from the US.
Can the US legally block a company moving its incorporation or transferring it's assets outside the US, and particularly if those assets are not within US territory (if, say, we have a base in international or non-Us waters)?
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What they ought to be focussing on (and I know I never give up on this one) is the SkyRamp (http://www.skyramp.org/). Relatively cheap, technologically within our boundaries, reliable, and best of all, it makes space launching a hell of a lot cheaper, and that's always the most expensive part, no?
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The whole idea of an orbital elevator always seems like such a cop-out to me. Call me a dreamer, but screw a giant elevator; I want an X-wing. I want a craft that's completely capable of taking off from a planetary surface, achieving escape velocity, and landing on another planetary surface, all in one self-contained unit. An orbital elevator, if one could even be built, might be great for getting cargo into orbit, but it doesn't do jack **** for physically landing on another solar system body or for getting back from said body. Let's put some money toward real space planes. I've watched too much Star Trek and played too much FreeSpace to want to dick around with a big carbon string sticking into space like so much lint. :p I don't know if anti-gravity repulsors or space-time bending warp drives will ever be a real possibility, but the way I see it, there's way too much sci-fi out there with so many explanations for how to achieve these types of travel for all of it to be complete rubbish. One of those descriptions of how to skirt with faster-than-light travel or antigravity has to have at least a little merit. Our understanding of physics isn't yet advanced enough to tell us if things like hyperspace or warp drives are even a theoretical possibility or just so much sci-fi BS, but we need to get to a point where we're able to answer that question. My great hope is that, over the course of my lifetime, someone is able to do just that. My even greater hope is getting to make a subspace jump in a Valkyrie look-alike, but I think that's even more impossible than half of the points I just made. :p
For those of you who may think I'm an idiot, you might possibly be right, but I'm also a physics major. I'm well aware of what our current limits are, but I'd also like to see those limits pushed forward. This year, the World Year of Physics, celebrates Einstein's four great papers and their driving forward of our understanding of the universe. Just think about how far we've come since then; more importantly, think about how much further we can go. Imagine the day when an orbital elevator would be seen as a laughable, useless piece of technology. Maybe, just maybe, people in 2105 will be able to look back and do just that. :)
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Well, in short/medium term the only feasible way of a manned exploration vessel will probably involve an in-orbit construction and launch (because odds are it'd be pretty damn big and need to store a lot of food, water, fuel and oxygen aside from, for example, big engines ala Orion), so it's not like the space elevator is useless in that regard. At some point we will need a frequent earth-space lift capacity, probably an orbital construction facility, and the main question is when we should sink money into that. Me, I think not quite yet.
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i think we just build a big slingshot, i know that it didn't work out so well for the coyote in roadrunner...but hey, we don't have buy it at acme.
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I say we sprinkle pixie dust on Turkish carpets. Physics has far less to say against pixie dust based propulsion than against the space elevator.
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or....we could sprinkle the pixie dust on the slingshot......then we could buy those cheap assed acme slingshots
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Okay. I think the only thing I was going to respond to was the question of US eminent domain.
Yes, from what I know if it is the property of a US entity and that entity tried to essentially change the sovereignty control over it to say UK. The US government would exercise eminent domain to take over the property.
Again, I could be wrong but AFAIK the government can do this to ANY property.
I am sorry I meant to say 10 cm to begin with I just forgot the zero or it didn't type or I forgot the number.
Again read the Space.com or Liftport FAQs.
As to the price aldo... I am not making it up. There are real scientist making that estimate.
Both NASA and LIFTPORT groups came up with roughly the same figures.
Someone must be giving major cash influx to LIFTPORT for the to be making climbers already. That someone would not be funding it for fun. He/she is funding it after making serious checks on how much it will cost.
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The American government could easily pay for this, I suspect. But they want bunker-buster nukes instead.
But then I think there are plenty of things here on Earth that need billions of dollars throwing at them before we worry about space exploration. Get those under control first, then we can think about space...
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Originally posted by pyro-manic
The American government could easily pay for this, I suspect. But they want bunker-buster nukes instead.
Do you realize how much debt the gov't is in right now? Maybe Clinton could have afforded it, but der fuhrer bush cannot.
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Well the reality is if we would simply not have done the Iraqi war we would have 100s of billions of dollars that we no longer have.
With the hundreds of billions of dollars we could have gotten every homeless person off the street or paid every college students entire tuition and still have had the money left over to build a space elevator.
We would probably also been able to put the rest of the money toward scientific research we could actually prosper from.
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Originally posted by Osiri
Well the reality is if we would simply not have done the Iraqi war we would have 100s of billions of dollars that we no longer have.
With the hundreds of billions of dollars we could have gotten every homeless person off the street or paid every college students entire tuition and still have had the money left over to build a space elevator.
We would probably also been able to put the rest of the money toward scientific research we could actually prosper from.
Given that the Federal Defecit has risen a trillion dollars in just 2 years (from 7 to 8), it's probably not just Iraq (that's about a 5th of it, though....), but nice fat tax cuts for the biggest earners and soforth. In context, that makes spending $100bn upon a not-particularly-new-tech moon mission seem even more unecessary, of course.
The reason I remain skeptical of the $10bn figure is simply the pure cost of carbon nanotubes. At present it'd be maybe about tenfold that just for the ribbons alone, and that's presuming they don't have to build dedicated factories, which they will surely have to.
I can understand perhaps $10bn to place it, but to actually research and build it seems a little optimistic to say the least, especially if you're having to develop technology from scratch or near-scratch. I did note that the LiftGroup FAQ doesn't actually give a predicted cost estimate. The Space article... it uses that 'under $10bn' within the context of occuring directly after describing how the already-manufactured cables would be raised.
To be fair, I've not been factoring the commercial benefits if they did build their own mass-manufacturing for nanotubes. I guess being able to produce tonnes of the things could provide an income source and reduce the actual cost of the technology. How that'd relate to the cost of actually building 40,000 feet or so long ribbon cables, I don't know. But I'd still imagine fabrication/R&D costs to be outside that cost estimate.
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Liftgroup does have it somewhere.
Yes, they are factoring in that the are already going to sell nanotubes they manufacture to car manufacturers and the like.
There is a much more detailed presentation at
spaceelevator.com
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I can't find the costings, natch.
Would say though (have I wrote this already?), that I'd rather see that money into an S.Ev than the current moon plan. It's just that I think it shouldn't be, of all possible things, the top funding priority. Above pissing away billions on a moon mission using old tech, yeah. Behind more robot probes and research on their propulsion; not IMO.
That's kind of OT, though.
summary... I'm sure about the ability of a startup to raise the required money on venture capital. Other than potential legal issues over how you'd 'control' a private business of that nature, I'd think that'd be the main barrier.
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I am not questioning your belief of where the money should go.
I just keep trying to say that the costs were done by someone else who knew what they were doing. NASA would not have BSed a cost to the extent you believe they are BSing it.
I agree that money should go to probes and such. Money should also go to this as the research and implementation of this would be less expensive than the probes you want up.
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Originally posted by Osiri
I am not questioning your belief of where the money should go.
I just keep trying to say that the costs were done by someone else who knew what they were doing. NASA would not have BSed a cost to the extent you believe they are BSing it.
I agree that money should go to probes and such. Money should also go to this as the research and implementation of this would be less expensive than the probes you want up.
I didn't say they were 'BS-ing' it, I said it seemed an oddly low figure based on a number of factors such as the sheer current cost of carbon nanofibres. Later I changed that a bit because I managed to read a bit more into it, and at the moment I'm simply not sure the costs would be as 'low' as $10bn. But I didn't accuse anyone of 'BS'-ing anything.
I honestly do not know the basis of that particular $10bn estimate from the space article. Like I said, I can't find the exact whole-project cost, because I think the $10bn refers to the cost of actually building the thing rather than large scale R&D and whatnot.
I don't object to funding going on this, though. Think I said that earlier. Just that, I think, it'd be hard to politically sustain even a $10bn sustained funding whilst the public seemed apathetic to the space program.
My only difference of opinion with you is, I think, that we'd both put the space elevator ahead of that moon mission, but maybe not at the same place. I'd want them launching a lot of probes, for example, in the 20-30 years they predict this taking, and also developing those probes capacity further.
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To build an orbital tether or elevator, it needs to be on the equator.
Will it be theoretically possible? Yes. I'd rather work on getting the possibility of a diaspora going though. And for that, we need a colony on the moon. At least a few hundred people.
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Originally posted by Grey Wolf
And for that, we need a colony on the moon. At least a few hundred people.
...and for that, we need a space elevator. :p
Hmm, has anyone ever thought of building a Space Escalator instead?? ;7
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When I was a kid, I once fell down an escalator (It was going up and I tried to go back or something.)
If we assume 300 mi to orbit, and a 45 degree angle, sqrt(300^2 + 300^2) = sqrt(90000 + 90000) = sqrt(180000) = 424.3 miles that you could fall down backwards on said space escalator.
Not to mention that at a rate of 5 m/h (usual escalator rate) it'd take you 84.9 hours to go up or down.
Yay math.
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Originally posted by WMCoolmon
When I was a kid, I once fell down an escalator (It was going up and I tried to go back or something.)
If we assume 300 mi to orbit, and a 45 degree angle, sqrt(300^2 + 300^2) = sqrt(90000 + 90000) = sqrt(180000) = 424.3 miles that you could fall down backwards on said space escalator.
Not to mention that at a rate of 5 m/h (usual escalator rate) it'd take you 84.9 hours to go up or down.
Yay math.
So what? Instead of steps, it'd be hotel rooms that go up the escalator! Nothing to fall down, either. :p
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Originally posted by Sandwich
...and for that, we need a space elevator. :p
Hmm, has anyone ever thought of building a Space Escalator instead?? ;7
Not if you build it right. Basically, we need to go back and try the whole Biosphere concept again. We need this colony to be self-sufficient. At most, a cargo load every year or so.
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Originally posted by Grey Wolf
Not if you build it right. Basically, we need to go back and try the whole Biosphere concept again. We need this colony to be self-sufficient. At most, a cargo load every year or so.
One of the reasons behind the Moon base or orbital platforms is that sending rockets and whatever from their surface instead of Earth's is much, much cheaper. Self-sufficiency does not bode well with that idea ("OK Doc so how the are we going to construct this Saturn X rocket? I know out of CHIMPANZEE POO").
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But they don't need to be building a rocket with internal resources to be considered self sufficient, they just need to be alive without needing weekly food / oxy supplies sent to them.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
But they don't need to be building a rocket with internal resources to be considered self sufficient, they just need to be alive without needing weekly food / oxy supplies sent to them.
Yes, one could certainly minimize the need for food/basic necessities supplies, but if you're going to use the base as a hop-off point for long-range missions, then why bother to go for full self-sufficiency if you're going to visit every now and then in any case? It could even be cheaper to try to not make the base entirely self-sufficient. The need for manpower in that kind of installation would require any self-sustainable system to be pretty large (I think).
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Originally posted by Janos
Yes, one could certainly minimize the need for food/basic necessities supplies, but if you're going to use the base as a hop-off point for long-range missions, then why bother to go for full self-sufficiency if you're going to visit every now and then in any case? It could even be cheaper to try to not make the base entirely self-sufficient. The need for manpower in that kind of installation would require any self-sustainable system to be pretty large (I think).
Reduces the long term support costs. If you're planning on having a base for a decade or so, I'd bet it's a lot cheaper in terms of simple transport if they can supply their own food, etc, over the long term.
It also prevents against problems if for some reason the heavy-lift capacity gets buggered up, i.e. as with the shuttle justnow. Also acts as a lift-off point for further development; means you can use the saved lift capacity for, say, mining tools instead of more oxygen tanks or freeze-dried ice cream.
Um...actually, I don't think you'd have heavy manpower anyways. I'd imagine it'd be primarily automated, particularly in terms of fabrication of stuff like rockets.
This is, interestingly, a page on a plan formed in 1984 for a full scale moon base by 2005, and self-sufficient (including fabrication of tools) by 2018 or so; http://www.astronautix.com/craft/jsce1984.htm
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Also, if you're going for long-range missions using the moon as a launch point, you're most likely going to establish some sort of presence. A self-sufficient moon base would be a perfect test case for that.