/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12401420
Comparing a physical industry to a software industry is retarded. However you are correct to assume a boom in the industry similar to the Aerospace manufacturer boom of the 1920s with most of them dying within 5-30 years because of market saturation leaving the most successful 10-20 worldwide companies to thrive.

These companies will most likely expand from smallsat deliveries to commercial operations involving manned spaceflight for tourism and industry along with the delivery of machinery. Once it becomes financially viable to harvest minerals from the moon and other bodies corporations will build their own private rocket fleet's to supply those resources back to earth just as they do today for bringing materials from Africa and Asia via ship and aircraft. It should be noted that a separation between rocket construction and actual use in the industry is almost guaranteed at this point the same as it has been for the oil industry buying tankers from shipyards instead of directly owning the shipyards themselves. This is the direction a private space industry is most likely to head looking at the historic timeline of similar industries.

Conflicts involving spaceflight may also accelerate the use of spacecraft in the future also similar to the airplane tourism boom that occurred after WW2 when the massive number of military aircraft were converted for civilian use and could supply cheap international mass transport.

What should future launch complexes look like? Should they be closer to population centers? How many launches should they be able to handle per day?