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Tito Good To Go, Rotary Spirals Downward
MousePotato writes: "Space.com is reporting that former NASA scientist turned Wall Street guru Dennis Tito has apparently gotten final approval (paid in full I guess is all you really need) for launch aboard a Soyuz by the end of April. Destination: ISS. Tito was originally slated to be one of the first tourists aboard the rapidly declining MIR space station. No specific figures are available on the site as to how much for the mircograv vacation but the rumor mill is placing the cost of the trip at $20 million USD. This may be just a few dollars more than buying your own rotary rocket company at auction but might just give the space tourism industry the kick it needs..."
Just imagine, Hot Rocky Mountain Oysters with Angelina Jolie Excited and Trembling
So, for $40 million could he bring a date? I'm sure he'd have his choice of nookie with a ride like that.
Personally, I always thought the project was a poorly conceived.
They planned to make a rocket that could go to GEO that was man controlled. The reliability for that kind of craft is exceeding difficult to create and relatively impossible for low cost. If they had gone unmanned, then maybe...but they also wanted to sell rides.
For low cost launch vehicles, I thought Universal Space Wares or Kistler would have fielded a good candidate by now.
kinda like algore's multi-billion $ bailout of the russian bankers, only problem there was that the russian mafia stole all the money *before* the bankers and crooked business men were able to...
the us gives the russians about $400 mil each year to help close down old and very dangerous nuke reactors, but they use the money to keep them running for another year because they are so desperate for electricity and no money to build newer and safer nukes...
there is a good chance of seeing another explosion at a russian nuke site that will make cherynobl seem like an m-80...
"...can you imagine a BEOWULF CLUSTER of these? That'd be some serious power!"
Is it Honda or Toyota that makes the CRV?
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
...just build a tunnel to the ISS?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Very roughly speaking you may be right.
However, the point is that to consider space travel "for the masses", you are looking at many, many of these flights. I think this an avenue that we should not go down.
I find it incredible that on slashdot everyone is so gung-ho about human space travel. Noone really stops to ask why, or consider what are the costs.
Sure I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, but the cost of putting humans up there is just not worth it.
How do you make hydrogen?
Electrolosys powered by solar arrays.
If we DON'T venture away from this rock, then I really don't see a future for humanity at all.
This is like Plato's 'Allagory of the Cave', once one of the men got free and saw what the world was outside of the cave, he realized that he had in fact been a prisioner in the cave.
We have seen and ventured into a bit of the universe away from Earth, and it's an amazing and hostile place. But to hold ourselves back would be denying one of our most basic instincts of discovery and exploration that has made us what we are today.
It would be sad to see humanity stuck on Earth, in the same monotony for the rest of it's existance.
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Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Q: Is this idiot a troll?
A: Too right!
And if you're not, go hug a tree somewhere.
Fine it's pretty much useless sending up a tourist/ex-scientist into space, but so what? I'm sure he's not going to be the ONLY payload on the trip. Supplies and such will have to be sent as well.
Hell if I had the cash to burn I'd do it too, it's been my life long dream to travel into space.
We were further ahead in space exploration in the 60's than we are today, that's just sad and there's no excuse for it.
Humans are curious for a reason, we need to satisfy that curioustiy, exploration is how we do it. Should we all climb back into caves and live out our lives? Hell no.
Your argument about the pollution created by the rocket is bunk. As was said in an earlier post the rocket exhaust contains no harmful compounds and actually puts Ozone BACK in the atmosphere. As was also pointed out if it DID pollute it would be the equavelent of a jetliner making a round trip to Tokyo from the US. SO, should we quit flying and go back to a world where every contry is an isolationist?
And as for your question, do you consider water a fossil fuel?
If you're being serious consider this, if you're trolling, go link to goatse.cx.
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National Budget Deficit $5.729 Trillion
Divide by 20million.
only 286450 more tickets to sell and our country is outta debt!! Woohoo!
But yes, the fuel for a roundtrip to Japan pretty much is a drop in the bucket. Delta alone flies that route several hundred times a year.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
I really think that at some point (hopefully not in my lifetime), we'll be forced into space because of the population size. The alternative is the majority of people living in conditions worse than they do now, or some sort of massive dying-off. Given the 3 choices, you can strap me to the front of a rocket, thanks.
Ahhh progress and a decent thread.
We do use robots for exploration, case in point the Mars Lander, exteremely successful we learned a lot. But, it also raised more questions. Now the question would be would it have been more productive to have humans there? Probably, since a robot dosen't have the 'intelligence' of a human. A human could experement further and come up with new ones that could be better suited based on his/her initial findings.
Robots can only bring us so far, in the end it's up to humans to take the data from the robot and make hypotheses(?) based on that and expirement further or draw conclusions. So, in the case of Mars would it have been more productive to have humans there doing expirements? In my opinion yes, would it be feasable? No, right now it's too expensive and dangerous.
Putting people in orbit however is much easier and comparitevely cheaper than going to Mars. Furthermore if we are to venture forth into the cosmos we need to know the effects of prolonged exposure to zero g etc on the human body. We can't do that on earth, so put a man in orbit.
The people doing this are volunteering for it, they know the risks, and accept them. It's the human adventure.
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Speaking of lighting a fire under the ass of the space industry, I'm writing a novel right now that is based on the single premise:
"In space, you can grow whatever you want, and deliver it pretty darn easily to anywhere on the planet"
Heh.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
A possible solution for dealing with NASA budget cuts.
Mod that up! I read that a few weeks ago and couldn't remember where. Thanks for posting the link :)
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
Tito has paid the final installment on his purchase, and the Russian Space Agency has supposedly approved, but the ISS isn't all Russia's, and NASA still has some say in whether or not he goes up. Personally, if I were an astronaut with my PhD and five years of training to get into space to work, I'd be ticked off sharing space with a rich tourist.
When the Russians wanted to do this on Mir, I was fine with it. Mir is their thing; if they want to let people video tape on Mir, that's fine. But ISS was funded almost entirely by the US, as Russia has been notoriously bad on holding up their end of the bargain, as you undoubtedly know if you've been following this whole charade. I wish that NASA could somehow stop the Russians from doing this. I know that they've got to be extremely angry at the entire situation. There's nothing they can do at this point, of course, but still, it makes me both mad and sad. What a waste of a wonderful research laboratory.
The ISS is a dump heap for those members of the studio audience who would have the $$$ and the hubris for such an ostentatious trip.
The ISS is cramped, already smells like astro-sweat, and has very loud air conditioners (I mean so loud you can barely hear yourself talk)
If I had 20 million dollars I would invest it in myself so I could get the skills and training needed to go into space and do something USEFUL, like piloting the craft or conducting scientific experiments. I would not sit up there bearing the sneers of the crew who is so top notch they get PAID to be up there (hazard pay).
Goat sex free since 2001
That's what people don't realize when they start attacking obscene amounts of wealth being tossed about by billionaires like so much used tissue. In previous centuries, if you wanted to be an artist then you got yourself a spot in the king's or duke's court. Even today, if you want money for your trade, then you go to the people who have money. It's that simple.
The government has always been fickle about giving money to space research in the aftermath of the cold war, and despite Clinton's recent calls for increases in funding, the new republican congress will be reluctant to increase and may even decrease Nasa's resources. So whom else can we turn to? You'd be upset if PizzaHut had another logo emblazoned on a rocket, so if you'll not court the corporations then you'll have to court the individuals. And it's not as though the research that goes into learning how to put rich people into orbit will be useless when we eventually get around to putting the rest of us there too.
Tito gets his thrill and we all benefit. What's the problem?
Read the rest of this comment...
$20 million seemed like a huge amount of money to me until I started thinking about how many people would have to pay $20 million per visit to cover the costs of building the ISS -- at a price tag of $100 billion, FIVE THOUSAND people would have to shell out that kind of cash, and then you'd still have launch and support costs...
JAMWiki Java-based Wiki engine
Well, I dunno. Apparently a Soyuz lifts off with 279.5 tons of fuel (we'll ignore the fact that much of that is LOX and pretend that it's all kerosene), and a 747 going NY to Tokyo takes off with about 125 tons, of which all certainly is kerosene. Roughly speaking, then, he's making the NY to Yokyo run and back in an empty jumbo jet -- extravagant, but hardly earth-shaking.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
> How do you make hydrogen?
> Electrolosys powered by solar arrays.
Nice idea but energy is energy.
I dont know the exact facts but I guess 95% of US energy comes from fossil fuels. What percentage solar arrays??
With attitudes as entrenched as these, no wonder the US will never sign the Kyoto accord
If he could, Stockman said, he'd say so to any small business considering moving to Kern County.
"It's a community of vultures," Stockman said. "When things start going bad, when we're wounded, people begin picking and chewing at us."
As somebody that was born and raised in Kern County, I completely agree with this statement. A little explaining might be in order.
Kern County straddles the southern end of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Bakersfield is on the western half. Mojave and Ridgecrest (home of NAWS China Lake and my hometown) is on the eastern half.
Bakersfield has resented for years the fact that all the innovative tech happens in the other half of the county. Bakersfield is primarily made up of unused oil fields, farmland and hicks. Mojave Airport has been the base of operations of quite a number of pretty cool things (The non-stop round-the-world plane Voyager, Rotary Rocket, several of the countries only privately owned military jets). Ridgecrest / China Lake is the Navy's primary weapon development base. The Sidewinder, AMRAAM, HARM and HARPOON missles were all designed at this base. Forget Area51 for seeing weird Govt stuff, check out Echo Range.
My point is, Bakersfield and Kern County regularly bleeds the outlying cities dry in order to support its growing population of LA Gang members, and California rednecks. This whole story about what they are doing to Rotary Rocket doesn't surprise me in the least.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
I don't know that the recent round of inexpensive space probes are anything to be proud of. How do you convert meters to feet again? Oops, splattered another better, faster, cheaper space probe into Mars.
How's that joke go? "You can have better, faster, or cheaper. Choose two."
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
You dont get it do you??
The key to space travel is energy.
If you want human-kind to travel to space, we should be spending our dollars on fusion research. Until that is solved, it is a waste of our limited resources to send people into space on a what amounts to a jolly.
I thought this was a story about the Jackson family...
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
And there is no third choice. Not yet.
Tito wants to dance, so he's paying the only piper who'll take his money.
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
Ummmm... the CRV will be man-rated; it has to be, since it will carry crew. Live crew, in fact... ;)
It's already been noted that the CRV or some derivative thereof would make a fine low-cost mini-shuttle. ESA (the European Space Agency) is has been spending money on that, and are even working on their own version of the landing parafoil (ESA is providing funds and hardware for the X-38 program anyway). The Japanese are also rumored to be interested.
Matter of fact, I've seen some preliminary design work on the ESA ideas for this, at JSC in Houston (but don't quote me on that...).
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
Damn shame, but true. Texas...
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
The Rotary Rocket was a brilliant design for many reasons, but very few people are willing to make that kind of paradigm shift in their thinking about vehicle design.
In the end, though, it was really killed by overall industry pressure. Like many inventions, people probably won't appreciate the value of a single stage to orbit reusable vehicle until they have it. And then we won't be able to build enough of them. (And don't let anyone convince you that the shuttle is an SSTO vehicle - as good as it is, it is an embarassment to its original objectives.)
I'll agree with that, but take it another step further, without the research being done CURRENTLY we have no hope of solving the fusion problem.
Most scientists, I think, will agree that Fusion is the key to our next step. But, fusion isn't going to just happen, research is needed, and that means some research outside the confines of earth's gravity.
I guess you have to look at all this as a necessary small evil.
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Check "Dragonfly" by Bryan Burrough for more info on Abbey and other aspects of the Texas mafia...
Oops, splattered another better, faster, cheaper space probe into Mars.
Keep in mind, "cheaper" generally means "a tenth the price of Viking. We can afford the expense of losing a couple. I don't know if NASA can afford the negative PR of it, though.
everything has a price.
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I take no responsibility for any spelling mistakes in the above post.
the tip you would have to give the pilot? :P Let's see...15% of $20,000,000...
How Jaded Are You?
remember total recall?
-- $email =~ s/\bat\b/@/;
I hope this causes folks with money to sit up & take notice, and start investing in getting the masses into space.
Why would anybody pay to launch dead Yugoslav dictators into space? Oh, wait...
"Oh Bother", said the Borg, "We've assimilated Pooh."
I first thought "Oh no! rotary spirals down? I won't be able to use my older telephones anymore!"
Boy was I relieved...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
if you have the cash..
At any rate, this is a good thing(tm) I think, more people going up into space can't be bad fore the economy, and it's not like we're paying for it out of our tax dollars or anything. Good for him.
You can't see this if you have sigs turned off.
space until we have non-governmental access to space through commercial, low cost rockets.
Oh well, maybe the Chinese will start landing on Mars, just the thing we need to kick America in the pants.
I hope he doesn't get gobbled up by Vermicious Knids!
My other sig is extremely clever...
Despite the fact that I usually maintain a *very* liberal bent, one of the things I *won't* miss about a democratic presidency/legislative majority is the fact that the dems have very, very rough on publicly funded science and space exploration.
While this can be good, in the fact that it makes scientists look for better, cheaper ways to do things, as in the various relatively inexpensive space probes we've been launching, it's murder on the sheer amount of real innovation and scientific advance. The only science that has gotten anywhere in the last 10 years has been bio-tech, and this is because profit is close at hand for the corporate world.
If you don't think this is the case, just ask any of the physicists who used to live in Texas. When Clinton was elected.. *BAMF*... there went the SSC.
From a purely nerd-boy point of view, It's nice to see big money being spent, even on a personal, wasteful basis, on space, when so little has gone into it over the last few years. Hopefully it will inspire more public and government confidence in space exploration.
Remember that early exploration of the Americas was costly in terms of money and human life, but without those early pioneers who knew that money was not coming easy or soon, we wouldn't have the industrial powerhouses of the western hemisphere cranking out computer hardware and cheap internet access today.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Spend it and what a way to spend it I must say. Hey soon (10 years or so) it might only cost a mere million to reach the stars. WOW i cant wait. Doh on my salary if I am lucky I might just be able to afford a trip to the space center.
If we refuse to be flexible, we are in effect opting out of the game of life. The world moves on without us.
how much would they be willing to pay for the return trip?
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
When I saw "Tito Good To Go", I thought for a second that the article was about Tito Jackson of the Jackson Five fame. He may not have the bucks to go to space, but I'm sure his brother Michael does. Maybe he could check out the anti-aging effects of space! Now if we could only stuff the Elephant Man's bones in his luggage...
I'd rather be a unix freak than a freaky eunuch
Ewige Blumenkraft!
...I'm glad my tax dollars are going to help the Russians run some sort of Dacha in space program. One last revolting, fucked up development brought to you by the Klinton administration, who were the forces behind this whole, oh, let's bring the Russians in on the ISS program. Great job, Bill....
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
'Rocket fuel' for the Soyuz craft are liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. The main biproduct of combustion is WATER and because of the heat ozone is actually PRODUCED.
There's no CO2 produced at all from the viechle, but I guess you could say the ground veichles/transportation train produce some pollution.
Also, humans NEED to have a future in space, and we need experience now. We can't just wait for 'sometime in the future' for spaceflight, because with that attitude it will never happen.
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Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Last I heard, Roton had paid Kern County off (see http://www.bakersfield.com/local/Story/264980p-248 599c.html). Then there was a small matter of an additional $775 servicing fee or somesuch, which got tacked on to the bill. As soon as they were told of this, Roton coughed up that too.
:v)
So it looks like it's not going down just yet, but the US government will soon launch phase 2 of the "let's keep space a government place" campaign by going after the 2001 taxes. Pricks.
The $150M Roton need to continue wouldn't even pay for the shuttle toilets. At this rate, the first private, reusable spacecraft is going to have cyrillic script on the side.
Vik
Two weeks?
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
Here we go again with the damn liberal commie tree hugging shit.
Lissen up raindrop, there's a high end and a low end to that fsck'n bell curve. Just because you chose to live in a mud hut and eat grubs doesn't mean that everybody has to. Oh. Wait a second, your type usually starts turning up around the middle, where people have enough food in their bellies and free time enough to start feeling guilty.
We all know where the bottom rung of the ladder is. And I for one don't particularly want to stay there. The one thing we can work on is pushing the middle (and the great mass of humanity) higher. Unfortunately for bleeding hearts like you, that means people like that guy get even richer. And get rocket rides.
Now, granted, I'm making the assumption that our inteligence makes this a non-zero sum game, otherwise ol' Doc Malthus will catch up with us no matter what we do. My view is "I don't want a bigger slice of the pie... I want another pie". And as I see it, there's more where that came from. And for that to work, someone needs to get real usage of space going.
So this guy squanders a few tons of fuel derived from fossil fuels. Big deal. The day's coming when we're gonna use 'em all up driving our SUVs to WalMart -- is that a better use for it? We'll just have to find something else once those are gone. (And yes, that probably will make it harder to generate electricty).
So feel free to freeze in your damn cave, just don't expect me to stay there with you.
The one point I do not understand is, does Tito need government approval (either US or Russian) to even board the space station? It is hard to imagine that the ISS is like, say, the local playground, where any joe can walk right in without the government giving its approval.
Though it was paid with american tax dollars, so how, at least in theory, could the government deny him access?
Paul_D
Hey, you were bitching about using non-renewable energy to power it and I offered a solution that doesn't use non-renenewable sources: light and water, which we seem to have a lot of.
You seem to be quite the extremist, even when offered solutions that you complained didn't exist.
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Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
I'll agree with you too.
But do most scientists agree that the correct next step is to send humans into space?? (let alone this nobody)
No way. Like I said all along - robots.
Fast, cheap and out-of-control.
I say, let Tito run NASA from space, and send Goldin to swab space fungus from the walls of Mir in preparation for deboost.
They aren't going to see any serious revenue until their launch vehicle reachs orbit, and even by their optimistic development cost estimates, that's going to take more than the 5 figure sum they owe in taxes, it's going to take another 8 figures of capital. Granted, there's always the chance that some wacky billionaire will cut a check (and Mr. Gates, if you're reading this: here is how to get geeks to forgive you for Windows) but I wouldn't bet on it.
In other words, if Rotary has paid their taxes, it doesn't mean anything besides a few more months of their aero test unit sitting in mothballs and their remaining staff (Gary Hudson, the man behind the whole thing, has left, and I don't know how many people survived their layoffs) praying for new investors.
Damn shame, too. Even Beal's out of the running now. I don't know how Kistler is doing now, but if they don't make orbit we can pretty much kiss serious space development goodbye for another couple decades.
I totally agree that robots are the way to go in space exploration. However, I don't give a damn about the environment (except for those stupid six-pack holders).
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
I was even born in Evanston and thought about going to Northwestern, but I just can't go back there knowing how many Rotarians I'll find.
"Watch these suckers jump when I get root." - l33t j03
Reference, please? I know that Maryland's Democratic congresscritters are reasonably good on space and science (for the usual pork barrel reasons, not any high principle - we have Goddard, NIH, NIST, APL, and the Space Telescope Science Institute).
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The economy has some problems and the mafia are not nearly as bif a problem as you think. Personal taxation is now done to 13% of annual income so many more persons are being encouraged to enter the system.
Why shouldn't the Russians accept commercial money to help their space program? If they want to be the first to offer the possibility of tourism then what is the problem?
In the US, this would be significantly more difficult because you would have to sign a boat-load of disclaimers before you crossed the starting line. One endemic disease in the US is the lawyer who effectively prevents many forms of high-risk activity being offered on a commercial basis. For example, you can't even commercially white-wate raft above a level 3 rapid in the US because of legal difficulties (5 is permissable elsewhere), so just think what would happen if you said to your legal dept that you want to offer space-tourism.
See my journal, I write things there
Boo for Rotary. Every time I have seen anything involving those guys the founder has come off as a complete jackass. Now they are blaming their failure on "fundamental flaws in the industry" which is some jackass not wanting to take responsibility for having a shitty business plan. The Roton at best is a luke warm idea, orbital vehicles have enough complexities in more traditional configurations without rotors; why would you want to add more complexity (read: things to go horribly fucking wrong and turn you into a short bright flare)? They attempted to design and build a prototype for their contraption (an prohibitively expensive proposition) with a very limited cash flow. Had they hired a smart CEO with business savvy they might have merely kept themselves are a research and development firm for their space vehicle and sold their idea to anyone interested in shouldering the cost of prototyping and deployment. Shooting evolved monkeys into space will be profitable in a few years when a market opens for such a business. First build a market and then capitalize on it; don't be a jackass and try to capitalize on a market that isn't even around.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Well when I talked to one of the people from Rotary trying to sell the concept, that is what they stated. Maybe they didn't know themselves?
I agree that the science done in space with humans is negligible. All good space science is done with robots.
What is done in space with humans is entirely different. We prove the technology necessay to support humans in space. This is very important in the evolution of the human race. We have to diversify ourselves from just one planet. The whole planet could get wiped at any moment. The goal of the human race is to explore and learn more about the world we live in. This includes earth and the universe.
Many in the scientific community think ISS is a waste of money. I disagree. ISS advances the technology for humans leaving earth.
bob
Tito recently provided SpaceRef with an in-depth interview which makes for good reading.
I think it would make me very nervous to invest a lot of money in Russia right now. Between the governmental problems (they can't even afford to pay their military) and the mafia who control EVERYTHING... I think someone with 20 mil could find a better place to put it.
He's totally creeping out the Great One, eh...
and then they'd need to add an infrastructure, and then more people would be living in space, and in a few decades, a space colony might be self sufficient.
And then we're out of the crib.
One would think slashdotters more than anyone would see the advantages of breaking the monopoly of a single agency over something with as much potential as space.
Ñ'
For $20 million, I'd be taking at least one member of the opposite sex with me. Schwing.
"I got naked in Mir and all I got was this lousy T shirt."
I mean, using rotating wings to maneuver in the atmosphere is hardly revolutionary, it just hasn't been applied to (sub)orbital craft. And $150 for the whole project? That's not exactly a lot of money. I guess the investment climate is pretty chilly, or maybe the execs didn't market effectively, but there should be SOMEONE in this world with the vision and cash to back this thing. I mean, Gates could stand to gamble a quarter Bil on extending his monopoly into orbit (oh, right, he already has).
Of course, I always preferred the idea to use a mountain near the equator to launch vehicles in an evacuated magnetic catapult, but with more variety in engineering solutions the more lessons we'll learn.
Cheaper, lighter, simpler. Even if it does flop, it still beats the hell out of the Shuttle.
As in Mir-co-grav?
.sig for rent
Suddenly, I feel light-headed...
-- This
"...they may harpoon us, but they ain't gonna pick us up on no radar screen!"
Q. How do you make the hydrogen???
A. From fossil fuels.
Human's don't *have* to make it into space.
You play to much Alpha Centauri.
Hey, what do we place his odds of survival at?
Okay, Mr. Tito is paying his own way. Let's make sure it stays that way. Anyone know what a fFlight to space costs? i mean, the total costs of ground crew, rocket fFuel, training camp, gallons of coffee all around ... does $20 million cover it all? i dunno. but if it doesnt, guess who covers the charges.
not that I'm against such expeditions; on the contrary, i'm a fFervent supporter. People are often asking "why do we spend money on a space program, today?" This is why. Not necesarilly fFor another 50 years of oddball experiments (all perfectly valid, i'm sure) but ultimately, those experiments must have terminus, and fFruition. Specifically, We must start putting people into space on a more casual basis, whether nasa officials agree with me or not.
This however comes at a cost. which is my concern. Using a presnt day model, 20 people hop on a bus and pay 50 cents to go across twon. be assured, the bus costs more than $10 to staff, license, gas, maintain, and drive. but it works because lots of people do this, and the collective money goes into an account which covers costs. And as long as people use it, and the account continues to see gain, the system will continue to work. My concern then, is that we put ourselves in a position to where this program can accept some fFinancial losses, without tax payers catching a lot of the slack. (This goes ever-more-so fFor the fFinancially strapped Russian space agency!)
W.H.Smith (a newsagents/bookstore chain) in the UK at least, is selling adventure holiday packages (you know the type, rally car driving, paragliding, helicopter flights type stuff), and at the expensive end of the range is a package promising a trip on a commercial passenger spaceflight at the earliest opportunity. The asking price is either £10,000 or £100,000 (There wasn't a price easily on display in the shops, but my brother works for them and couldn't remember the number of zeros). They reckon you should collect on your purchase sometime in 2003 (by which time your £100,000 should have grown somewhat as well), and give you various things to help prepare you for your trip.
Something that article doesn't mention is that Rotary Rocket claims to have wired the money this week to cover the back taxes. Kern County officials say that they'll hold the auction unless they can verify funds being in receipt. So the auction might be cancelled, it's hard to tell. If it isn't I'm gonna be there.
This is so sad, Rotary Rocket has such a cool cool concept for a re-usable manned SSTO that could have serviced the International Space Station. Iridium's failure is to blame for Rotary's problems. If Iridium hadn't failed, the launcher market wouldn't have dropped out from under companies like Rotary, Kistler and Beal.
What you are not thinking about is the absolutely incredible amount of resources that are totally wasted on this trip. Enormous amounts of wasted fossil fuels, and increase in both atmospheric CO2 and ozone eating rocket fuels.
This guy just doesn't give a shit about the global environment.
My feeling is that there is absolutely no scientific or economic justification for sending human scientists into space - let alone tourists.
Leave it to the robots.
When Tito goes up this year, there is going to be a lot of attention unless MirCorp screws it up. NASA is very pissed off about him going to the ISS because they're worried that people will start realizing that "hey, normal people can survive a trip into space and why the HELL haven't you boys at NASA made space flight anywhere near as safe and cheap as the Russians yet?"
A space shuttle launch costs $500 million or so, $1 billion if you amortize the whole development into the cost. A Soyuz launch (most reliable manned spacecraft in the world) costs as low as $10 million and possibly as high as $50 million, depending on who you talk to. NASA needs to put some beef into man-rating the X-38 derivative CRV and certifying it for launch aboard an ELV (like a Delta) so that we can have a cheap way to put people in orbit.