Pwokenyaw,

Cheap Access To Space is NOT a product to be invested it, and no one will do it for profit until there's a real market for it. And how do we get a market? By putting stuff in space that people want put there. But no one will do that until it is cheap enough...

CATS is more like a massive public-works project, like any one of the huge bridges nations have built and are now building. And CATS, therefore, won't happen without Government involvement - 50%, maybe, if investors see a short term gain, but usually more like ~ 100%. Governments see such as money spent directly on economic improvement with a definite gain in the mid to long term future. A gain from increased commercial activity.

So why not take the "metaphor" literally and start pushing the "Bridge to Space" angle rather than the "Exploration" flag-waving? The US could have gone to Mars back in 1981 and had a 72-person crew on Mars and in Mars orbit by 1989! That was the initial recommendation back in 1970 for post-Apollo activity, with Space Tugs replacing Apollo spacecraft by 1975, 12-man Station after Skylab, probably in 1977 and nuclear shuttles pushing cargos to the Moon by 1978.

Mars was an end point of a design and development process that merely clustered together proven elements - a Space Station module and nuclear tugs - with one new vehicle, the Mars Exploration Module. That would in turn be the core of the Base modules. Six Base modules would house 48 crew and a 24 person station would support orbital operations. All by 1989.

But it didn't happen. Vietnam slurped up the $$$ like some bloated beast, and the Oil Crunch scared Government even more.

Adam