Pessimist

I can still remember reading NASA propaganda back when I was a wee lad, and I can remember looking at those jazzy paintings of wheel space stations the size of cities, and underground lunar complexes... Give it 20 years it said, and I'll probably be breaking eggs on the Moon. And from that moment on I was hooked.

Well, it's been 20 years, but I don't think I'll be breaking eggs on the Moon anytime soon. Peter Diamandis disagrees:

The personal spaceflight revolution now underway is spawning a suborbital travel market that will lead to passenger traffic headed into Earth orbit, Diamandis said. “In the next five to eight years we will have the first private orbital flights occurring,” he predicted.

Diamandis added that something very natural will happen when private orbital flights arise. “When you’re in orbit you are two-thirds of the way to anywhere,” he said.

“I predict that within about three years of private human orbital flights…you’ll have the first private teams of people stockpiling fuel on orbit and making a bee-line for the Moon,” Diamandis said.

“They’ll not ask for permission…maybe cryptically hiding what they are doing…but there will be somebody making a bee-line to the Moon,” Diamandis said. The first private team to reach the lunar landscape will stake out the ground. “They’ll say this is ours. Stay away. I claim this for my company…my new nation,” he said.

First of all, it's said that low earth orbit is the halfway point to anywhere in the universe. I don't know where Peter comes up with this 2/3'rds stuff. This whole idea stems from the fact that technically you've achieved half of the energy at low earth orbit that you will need to get anywhere in the solar system.

I know that the disappointments of NASA shouldn't be thrown on to its cousins in the alt-space movement, but I find it hard to believe that we'll be starting orbital flights in 8 years. From what I've read, Rutan doesn't think so either. I do agree though with the assessment that as soon as we start orbital flights, it will be a real space race to get to the Moon.

And this time it won't be governments chasing after it. This time it will be private citizens.

Taking the old rule of NASA timelines, you have to double the time of any prediction. That means we'll probably really have orbital flights in 16 years. But again that was NASA, with these private space companies we really don't know if they know how to meet their own propaganda.