The next figure is a painting by R. Dimmer, courtesy of the publication “Science Year.” This particular painting was reproduced on the December 5 issue of Science magazine and simply shows what on of the early habitats for a construction work force might look like. I think the major contrast is it is rather more attractive than the working conditions on the Alaska pipeline. Interior Model Four colony. Artist: Frank Guidice. Prepared through a NASA contract, and should be credited to NASA. The last figure [see figure 1, p. 133], I will spend some time over, because it gets into the details of the economics. And I should say that it is customary, I am told, that interest charges are not included in projections like these. Here I have explicitly shown those interest charges, which have been taken as 10 percent per year in constant 1975 dollars, equivalent roughly to 17 percent discounting as economists usually apply discounting. Here we estimate a period of roughly 6 years during which the first of the construction stations would be built. [The first of the satellite power stations built at the space facility would come into operation roughly 1 or 2 years after that time.] And at the. same time one sees investment here with interest charges causing the stairstep down representing a net cost. Now, because of the bootstrap process, that is, the fact that a satellite manufacturing facility would build other manufacturing facilities as well as power satellites, one gets the geometric growth in time of the number of power satellites—1, 2, 4, 8 and so on—actually, in this case, we have for technical reasons chosen to let it build a little more slowly. But
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