--- On Sun, 5/9/10, Klaus Fütterer <k.futte...@bham.ac.uk> wrote: > Dear Jack, > > I believe your venture would enter a mature market, and, if > you were to offer growing growing crystals in microgravity, > a market characterised by very high costs and (presumably) > very low margins.
I wouldn't offer crystal growth, I would offer access to the data from x-ray diffraction of space-grown crystals. Is the data from significantly improved crystals not a valuable commodity? If the pharmaceutical industry (and other researchers, for that matter) could grow crystals in space, and extract critical data from the x-ray diffraction of these space-grown crystals (in space); AND if costs could be reduced by 30-50%; AND if the end-product is the data, not the crystals . . . do you still think (profit) margins would be nominal? Is your assessment of "very low margins" based on assumed "very high costs?" Jack
