Re: Cost of space travel

Laserlight writes:
>>   Besides, if we stick to the "travel is horribly expensive
and
>> it takes an $11 billion bottle of wine to justify it" theory,
>
>Excuse me for asking, but did you read Costikyan's article or
are
>you just referring to the title?
>(Which was about trade, not colonization, but it's still a good
>reference).

Read it several times.	Have it on C drive.

>Space travel will get cheaper (provided it starts in commercial
sense at
>all) -- but so will almost everything else. It's not that long
ago when
>normal "middle class" people ate vegetarian meals not by choice
but
>because they couldn't afford meat for every meal. If you can
get
>everything you could possibly want from here, for peanuts, why
would you
>bother to export it from West Betelgeuse?

Well, how about because they know how to make it, and you don't?
Or because it costs you peanuts to make, but costs them only
half a peanut.
I'm not saying we'll be shipping grain, but I am saying that
each planet will not have identical infrastructure and it may be
cheaper to buy from someone who already paid the startup costs
than to pay those costs yourself.