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Russians Offering More Space Tourism
mduell submitted an MSNBC story about a company in Russia offering more trips to space. No docking with the space station for these tourists tho. No word on price... instead of a week in Soyuz capsule, how about you give me half of the multi-million-dollar-fee, and you can stay at my place and I'll get you drunk. You'll feel like you're in zero Gs, but with a bigger room.
The problem with this is people would only complain even more. "Why are we spending government tax dollars subsidizing space flight so a bunch of rich tourists can get their jollies orbiting the earth when we have children starving to death down here?" No, commercial spaceflight would be the death of NASA. If that's how it is to be then so be it but I don't think we can have a government agency subsidizing this kind of thing. $20 million is a piss in the bucket of how much it costs to fund a trip into orbit.
I saw alot of talk about "corporate welfare" in the 80s and early 90s and I've always thought...what is corporate welfare.
You take Federal funding and give it to companies and what happens to it? It will go to wages for employees, money spend on R&D, money spent on suppliers, contractors, etc. If the company getting the "corporate welfare" pays dividends...Shareholders get some money...at the very least stock prices go up.
Now in the welfare system, money is doled out and there is little to no return on it. So I think corporate investment is a better term for contracts like this than, "corporate welfare".
That's my offtopic remark. Ontopic, I think that the Russians should do whatever they want with space tourists as long as they don't use the ISS for sleepovers...at this time. Once it's finished...have all the sleepovers we can up there.
Nope. South Dakota, although I have family in Kansas on both the English and Potawatomi fronts.
"tourists" jump out of airplanes with parachutes on their backs every day.
Skydiving is as safe as you want to make it, of course. There are probably some good outfits out there, and others that are either run by idiots, or accountants who would cut corners for an extra penny. People can, have, and will continue to die skydiving. It does not deter more from trying "something thrilling". Part of the thrill is because it IS dangerous.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I mean, are meals included? What about booze? It would suck to pay that much money, and the food was bad. Or worse, it costs extra, and the prices are outrageous, and you can't exactly stop at McDonalds when you're travelling 17,000 mph.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
They could have sent the capsules up to Mir and let it be the first space hotel - albiet not as nice as the one in 2001.
I'd love to see that brochure:
Come stay in Mir(*) - for just $500,000 a night (minumum 6 night stay). See tons of space debris. Spacewalk (way) above the sandy beaches of the Rivera. Battle space fungi. Join the 100-mile high club.
(*) requires return trip purchase on our carrier - round trip ticket, $20million - first class upgrades not available.
Dennis Tito had training, but his training would not neccessarily have kept him alive in all situations. After all, the astronauts who did in the Apollo I fire were well trained, and so were the Crew of the 1986 Challenger flight that ended in disaster. Likewise, many cosmonauts have also died due to equipment failure.
The Challenger exploded because of a faulty O-ring, not because of the preparedness of any of the astronauts. According to Richard Feyman, NASA, for various political reasons habitually understated the risk of a catastrophic accident. These artificially low risk assessments prompted NASA to recruit a civilian teacher, and to launch various government officials into space.
Space travel in inherently dangerous, and it is likely that space tourists will die as a result.
To clarify what Radja said. Rich people don't actually need life insurance. A lot of them have lots of insurance but the troth is they don't need it. Let me explain.
The whole point of Life Insurance is so that if you die suddenly your children, spouse and other dependents will not be left hungry and homeless. They will have a big lump some which if managed wisely can substitute for having the breadwinner active and about.
By this logic you need less insurance on your wife if she is a full time homemaker than you do if she has a high paying job. Remember, insurance is not a way to soothe emotional distress or mend a broken heart. It's just for filling in the financial loss.
This BTW is why classic cars like the 1963 (or thereabouts) Ford Batmobile are not really insurable. Even a brand new Bentley is no substitute.
Back to the topic. If you can find $40,000,000 cash at one time then you should give all your kids fat trust funds. Leave the life insurance for the man who makes $30,000 to $200,000 per year and has a $1,000 per month mortgage and school fees, car payments etc... to ensure he doesn't save more than 1/3 of that.
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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
This reminds me of the Moxy Fruvous song "You Will Go To The Moon"
"You will go to the moon
There's plans for a hotel and a lagoon
You'll be savoring a star fruit
And kicking off your moonboot
Oh you will go to the moon.
Hey, you will go to the moon
A paradise to rival Cancun
And one side's always sunny
You'll be raking in the money
Oh you get paid on the moon
It's been our most abiding dream
And a dream is an easy sell
And when the tourists come in droves
You'll be the big cheese on that orbiting rondelle"
Anyway.. I don't see this being a long-term trend.. There are only so many wealthy people who would pay 20 million to drink vodka in space..
Victoria Palmer - I brake for unix.boys, Windows just breaks. - http://www.escape.com/~juliet
Get them drunk? For that kind of money, I'll get you shit that will make you think you *are* gravity..
Actually, how's about a Soyuz with 3 aboard to make an adult film? OK, so they're not on a space station, but I would imagine such a film would be WILDLY popular- or, at least, educational. We'd at least get documentation on the advantages (and disadvantages) inherent in specific exercises...
-soup (GNUrd, Speaker to Machines) "Laugh at yourself- Why should everyone else have all the fun?" -Romanchek's 6th Ru
That finds the prospect of a drunken bender at the taqueria a truly terrifying proposal? At any price?
Regards,
ehintz
...provided that the Soyuz runs "shared source" and bluescreens in the orbit. A small step for a man but a giant leap for mankind... ;-)
What's wrong with getting a few wackos with millions of dollars of spare change to fund all this research though? .. IMHO, NASA screwed up by not grabbing this guy Tito's money in the first place and putting it into a project like the ISS that DOES cost a helluver lot of money to do.
;) .. Such an argument is/was used against opening up the internet AFAIR.
It's how stately homes are funded for upkeep, you get visitors and they pay an entrance fee. Same principle, different scale.
There's nothing dubious about these places having tourism. People tend to be interested to see what goes on over the fence. Plus, you're not saying that space should only be for the academics are you?
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Delphis
Delphis
Just do a skydive!
:-)
In the first seconds you are really weigthless as said by Mr Einstein
Much cheaper than a space trip or a doing "parabolic flight".
A bit short though..
Why does the ISS computer system have 3,000,000 lines of code? What possible excuse is there for that except for bloat. What are the responsibilities of these lines that are so critical? Shouldn't these functions be decentralized into programmable contollers instead? That way is one fails the rest continue on happily. Why put all your eggs into one fragile basket?
As for the deathtrap analogy the Soyuz spacecraft is safer than anything we have built in a fatality/launch basis. Solid rocket boosters are not my idea of a safe launch vehicle for human passengers, the only way to abort is detonation.
And the added bonus is only the richest 0.01% of the US would be able to even afford such a vaction.
Would be roughly the same as spending a week in a hemetrically sealed, small office cubicle with two other people. Imagine what that would be like after a few days and spaceflight rapidly loses it's glamour.
Amen! It is really embarrassing to see NASA fighting tooth and nail to limit commercialization of space while the Russians embrace it.
Could I ride in the space truck? Yeah... the russian space truck!
spoo
Hi all I am establishing a charity fund to help make a wish come sure and get a RANDOMLY selected individual on one of these flights. Please goto : http://www.getredsmokerichandinspace.com to learn more about how you can help toward this charity! Save the starving college students!
I'm sure they have to sign waivers first
We are all already "in space" - Moreover, "Trips away from the Earth" would have a much better appeal.
Ouch...
Nice to see all that money I pay in taxes is being blown on what amounts to corporate welfare. Eventually we should see some glimmer of these technologies leak into the public sector, but until then, it is in my opinion a wasted effort.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
if you can pay for the trip yopu don't need it
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Maybe they'd be willing to negotiate trip in exchange for a couple of live reports about it on Geeks In Space. Yeah, they'd probably still want a few buck, but it might bring the price down to the budget of geeks. And of course, without a doubt, Slashdot would get slashdotted.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
A week locked in an outhouse in the middle of the Kazakhstan desert. Decisions, decisions.
A Soyuz capsule is basically a three person transportation vehicle with about as much space as your average econobox car, correct? So no flips, no rolls, just a feeling of weightlessness, pooping in diapers, eating Russian MRE's, and not being able to stretch for seven days.
I suspect if they want repeat business the Russians had better shorten the length of the tourist-cosmonauts' journey. The ISS is by no means a five star hotel, but at least you could straighten your legs without kicking your crewmates and you didn't have to take a dump in industrial-strength Depends.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
If people will pay to do it with their significant other in airplanes and hot-air balloons, there gotta be a market for doing it in space.
As much as I'd like to criticize the crassness of the whole Russian enterprise, at least it's *something* positive for space tourism, which is more than NASA has ever generated. God knows we'd be waiting around till our nose hair reached down to our armpits before they'd okay such a thing. Maybe because the Russians are doing this, they'll skirt some of the legal issues associated with the American legal system, i.e. five billion pounds of paperwork. After all, if these folks have the money and want to do it, and are prepared to accept the risks, and don't get in the way of the real astronauts and their work - and if the Russians are willing to pony up for whatever resources the "guests" use - then why the heck not?
There were quite a few studies into this sort of thing in the UK in the 80s and 90s. You'll remember we had a right wing government under Maggie Thatcher that was very keen on closing down inefficient industries, laying off huge amounts of people, putting an axe to a large amount of the UK's industrial base. Interesting thing was several studies have since shown that it would have been actually better for the country to keep those people employed inefficiently than laying off all the workers and going for ultra efficient companies (that turned out not to be much better anyway). The amount of wealth distributed by those people, passed on to secondary employment (e.g. shopkeepers, people making luxury goods for employed people, products sold to those people) far outweighed the advantages of creating massive unemployment and having more profitable companies (that mostly got sold off to overseas investors anyway).
Yup, there's proof this stuff works. Not to say it wouldn't be a great idea to work out how to keep all those folks employed and do things more efficiently, but there you go. Definitely a better starting point.
The other major ON-topic point here is that space tourism in Russia will be fulfilling exactly this role, keeping people in an ailing economy in work, keeping equipment working, providing jobs for the bright young graduates and helping develop an underfunded sector. So go for it. There's a lot of very valuable experience we can't afford to lose and if a bit of free market capitalism is required to keep it going, then so be it. Kinda funny the Russians are playing the USA at their own game, though I think the Russians have always been pragmatic.
The NYTimes article.
Sending tourists seems like it's just asking for trouble. And i thought skydiving made it hard to get life insurance...
I belive David Bowie put it best: "Ground control to Major Tom..."
I am !amused.
*splutter* now this deserves modding up, thanks, a Friday laugh much needed
hc
Just like what they did to Dennis.
from the whats-the-airport-code-for-space dept.
$$$
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Perhaps the millionaires should get together and finance a space hotel of sorts. It would allow them to capitalize on the public's interest in space travel.
Of course, the Russian government may not be able to pay for next year's VODKA rations if they can't gouge wealthy american's who want into space.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
A concerned American who must post AC for my own safety.
Well you just missed the Post Anonymously checkbox and landed on the Submit button... Don't you just hate it when it happens.. :) .*shrc is
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$HOME is where the
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
I can see it now:
Hello folks I'm Rodger Johnson of CBS news, and I'm here with the winner of this month's "Space Lottery" 59 year old Paul Thompson. Paul is a retired mailman, and knows absolutly nothing about about g-forces, the effects of low gravity on the body, and he has no skills that may be useful on a space flight. Paul retired early after his second heart attack, but likes rollercosters, so he doesn't think the acceleration will bother him much. He is a bit concerned that the diet on the shuttle and ISS can be tailored to his diabetic needs. So here he is folks: America's next Astronaut!
Seriously, at least with the way the Russians are doing it now they can screen people ahead of time. In a lottery sitiuation you'd have to screen people before they bought their tickets. Who's going to submit to a full medical screen and background check before they buy a lottery ticket? The other option is just to keep drawing till you get someone medically qualifed, but what do you tell the people who's numbers were drawn, but couldn't go? Sorry, here's your dollar back? They'd be buried under an avalanche of lawsuits. I'm all for "space for the masses" but the fact is that under current conditions many people CAN'T go to space. to promise an "open lottery" would just be to invite disappointment and problems.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Use IRS for peeling everything - money, money, ideas, clothes, money ;-)
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Here in the Netherlands (and probably in the rest of the world) there is a big problem with the trains arriving/leaving on time and now the goverment decided if that the train leaves 30 mins late you can get 50% of you're trainticked back, it would be nice for this to happen for spaceflights.....
2 days delay, 400% refund? hmmm.. beam me up scotty
What would you do without a monitor? Sit and look stupid behind a keyboard and a mouse
http://www.forbes.com/400richest/
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fat lenny's gonna lick your brain today.
Precisely; it's a liability problem. Now that Dennis Tito has gone and come back, space tourism is inevitable (though it will be a long time until it's cheap). The Russians want to sell rides, let them. They need the money, and thrill seekers will get their thrills if they want them.
One can only hope the Russians do something useful with it, though...
/Brian
You'll be allowed to jump off the ground as high as you can.
No thanks.
I agree completely. The space shuttle is a wonderful investment. Will somebody mod that post up, please?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Yes the Russians are/were brave to do that, but you'd never catch the American government with a plan like that today.
Amarican politicians are chickenshit when it comes to taking risks like that without major, short term returns.
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Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
If you want to make the comparison of manned spaceflight to the internet, then you would have to consider the current state of the art in manned spaceflight to be equivelant to the early days of ARPANET. In which case, of course it makes sense to restrict access to it. It's a relatively untested, unreliable technology that hasn't even reached its infancy. It costs tens of millions of dollars per person, and takes the efforts of thousands of skilled engineers to make it work. It should be done only when there's no other way to get the job done, which certainly debars the public, at least for now.
BTW - I did read the article. If you read my post, perhapse you would have realized that I mentioned the fact that it wasn't on the ISS. In my opinion, the fact that it's a purely Russian effort stengthens, not weakens, my argument. The Russians have fewer resources to squander.
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In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
However, the ISS is a research station. They're supposed to be doing science and enginering stuff up there that will [someday, I hope] benifit all of us stuck down here in the gravity well. It somehow doesen't sit right with me that the Russians, however cash strapped they are, let a guy pay his way onto the ISS, and are planning to expand this (even if there won't be any more actual ISS visits). It would be like if CERN or Fermilab turned over their accelerators to someone who's willing to pay tons of cash to blow the hell out of a banana.
The ISS has been sucking huge amounts of money out of space programs that could do better science. For the price of the ISS, you could do hundreds of unmanned missions to Mars, and they would yeild mountains of real scientific data that would truely enhance our knowledge about, well, everything. If the ISS can't produce the same bang for the buck, it shouldn't be funded.
Space turism for the ultra-rich on or off the ISS strongly suggests that the scientific value of these manned missions is dubious.
Again, don't get me wrong here - I want to have humans in space, and if I could, I would jump at the chance to be one of them. But research money is a limited resource, and untill we have the technologies to do it economically, we should be spending out cash on either pure science or developing those technologies.
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In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
Can you imagin how the Russian goverment will be sued if one of the ships kills someone rich?
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
I agree with you on this. It's a shame NASA isn't doing something along these lines. I'm glad that someone is finally doing commercial spaceflight. It's been a long time coming and personally, I think it's over due.
plop
I think the problem is in insurance,
not life or such, but more insurance for
NASA..
perhaps they need a company that says
we will insure the average joe..
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
Letting non scientists spend time on Alpha just because they can pay is a really, really bad idea.
Some nut with cash and a cause is gonna be remembered for a long, long time.
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What happened when the US sent a civilian in space?
One word: Challenger
It may not seem like a problem now-a-days, but those that were responsible still are extracautious...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
You can't sue the Russians except in Russian court - and they doubtless will think that was in bad faith of the waivers they have to sign...
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
After all, it's strictly a question of filling an existing demand, namely doing something that very few people are able to do. The fact that customers that want to fullfill this demand, are being asked exorbitant amounts of money isn't even relevant. Half of the attraction of going into space is the fact that it shows that you have a gazillion to spend on the little luxuries of life.
I'd say, let's hope there will be a lot of companies to offer this service. And let's hope they even make a profit. They'll pay taxes (which is actually money taken of their rich clients) and, consequently, I'll pay less taxes.
You gotta love'em.
I have a photographic memory for numbers. I know almost a hundred of them.
Has anyone ever been drunk in space? That sounds like fun.. assuming you can hold your liquor.
wishus
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My belief why NASA tends to very opposed to this type of thing is that they are scared sh*tless that they are going to lose funding because of it. All it's going to take is someone to get the bright idea that instead of space researched paid by taxes, that it could completely survive on the private sector. Think if Congress started siphoning off the budget money, and say "if you want some more money throw up some tourists, to fund your next deep space satelite". Funding from the next solar panel, will come from the 5 tourists that have to be shot up, because Congress decided they didn't want to give us any more money.
I don't think NASA is all that concerned about someone going through the proper training, etc. and being a safety hazard, but more about what this could truely mean, to all those nickles and dimes they've had to beg and plead for. Could cause lots of problems on actually getting true research done.
Cosmonaut: "I hope you are enjoying the trip, Mr. Gates. Did you know that all of the computers in our vessel are running on Microsoft products?" Gates: "DEAR GOD, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!"
What was Christa McCauliffe, if not NASA's first "space tourist?" And she WAS killed, along with the others, by NASA's insistence upon getting that bird up despite the known problems with o-rings. To your credit, though, this was the "end" of our space program for a number of years.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Maybe an accident would set tourism back for a decade, but without people trying things like this, space tourism wouldn't happen for at least a decade anyway.
I agree with both of you. I feel that NASA might be better off putting a little time into developing a program to safely and comfortably (withing reason) send tourists into space. NASA would also benefit from teaming up with other companies in some ventures. I know everyone here thinks corporations are bad, but they're the ones with the money and I'd like to see some of that going into helping the space program.
You also have to remember that if NASA does decide to start sending tourists into space, then one accident could mean the end of our space program. Not that accidents in NASA are a common occurance, but one mistake and the public would go crazy to the point of forcing the government to put an end to NASA. (I can see the slashdot posts now "WHAT IDIOT HAD TO IDEA TO SEND TOURISTS INTO SPACE?!?! Click here for goatsex")...
Anyway, some stuff to think about...
Another beautifully uninformed slashdot rant.
Without the Shuttle, how would Americans get into space? With 40 year old technology, the way the Russians do? Remember that we will never know how much Mir or the Soyuz programs cost, because it was swallowed in the communist regime. Who knows, compared to Mir, ISS might be a bargain!
Furthermore, the US cares a whole lot about little things like, i dunno, SAFETY that the Russians don't give a damn about. You think I am overstating things, read "Dragonfly" by Bryan Burrough. NASA comes off as the bureaucratic mess that it probably is, but you'll think twice before claiming the Russians have a "sensible space policy."
But, it's easy to pick on NASA. After all, it is a government agency. But before you rant about NASA inefficiency, think about your own code. What happens if there's a bug? Well, you fix it. And send out a patch. ISS has THREE MILLION lines of code, and any bug could be a complete disaster. So ALL of that code has to be checked and rechecked.
In sum, working in space is HARD. Many times harder than any environment on the ground, even
a corporate cubicle. If you ever get the chance to go into space, you will be relying on all the "whooping it up" that NASA is doing. Or you will be flying in a 40 year old Russian deathtrap. The choice is yours, but I hope you choose the deathtrap.
"Fifty million Americans can't be wrong," said Rep. Billy Tauzin. Gore - 50,999,897 Bush - 50,456,002
Prediction: They're going to shoot someone into space who's not prepared to be there, some sort of emergency happens and the tourist, who is unprepared for anything to go wrong, dies. And just because someone ran an unsafe space toruism operation, people will get the impression that safe space tourism isn't possible, and that will set the whole thing back years.
Bleah. A reasonable level of safety for a space tourist is more than just taking someone's cash and cramming them in a Soyuz capsule.
The most important use for the space station is for tourists. Why? Marketing my boy, marketing. If the common man can relate to the activities made possible by HIS money then he will be more willing for you to use HIS money for that and other scientific applications. Think WIN - WIN people. Life, politics and econonmics are not zero sum. We all are more human when any of us gets out of our box/gravity well. - peace yall.
If I had that kind of money, I would quit my job and go to Barbados, swim in the blue waters and drink Mt. Gay Rum or off to the mountains of Colorado or somewhere else where I could get some fresh air and not be cramped up in a cubicle/space capsule all day.
Governments are supposed to set up conditions that allow for private markets. They are not supposed to be in the market themselves. That is unfair and leads to corruption. Not to mention lack of competition.
That's wonderful that Russia has a 13% flat tax (if true), but that doesn't justify the government monopolizing a business sector that should be entirely private.
Think intel, amd, ibm, sun, etc. Not energia and nasa.
I think we might be advocating a road frought with peril in pushing for tourism through NASA.
NASA was organized to provide for scientific exploration of space. It is a form of socialism to construct such an organization, but our society has determined that it is a trade-off worth making, as there has been little profitablity to be gained from early space exploration.
That seems to be changing.
It seems there are now possibilites for a profitable space program - and that should preclude government involvement. We have already seen first hand results of large socialist programs, and it is never good.
Ideally, we should see NASA's role slowly diminish in the coming decades, until it vanishes completely. I see nothing wrong with continuing ISS, but it should be in a completely scientific context.
The public would not be happy to provide vacations for a wealthy few in a tax-subsidized program.
There is a reason the Russian government doesn't mind charging space tourists - they are a socialist state. Let's not begin to follow their footsteps to socialism.
heh heh heh
Don't you think the bugs hitting your face at that speed would hurt?
Actually, I'll be allowed to give you the added thrust from my boot to your ass to send you flying as far as you can go. Enjoy!
A company? A private company is offering this service? How many customers do they expect to have? Surely thare aren't that many people who have a spare $20 mil AND are willing to throw it into a single vacation... How do they epect to keep in business? I'd love to see the financial projections for this company... Amazing...
--CTH
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--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Thats a mute point. The United States does this sort of a thing all the time.
Next is that once these visits start it won't be long before space travel becomes more affordable to more people (I am still waiting to be able afford to travel abroad though).
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
Boy oh boy those commies are sharing space!
Whats next? Men on the moon?
The Lottery:
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
I'm hoping that they can get this to a level where I can go up (months, winter home, etc
PS: OT: My roommate is going off about exploratory cats.... redundant?
Previous poster said that it was 'bout 10m to get a soyuz up, with 2 passengers, that can easily make them 10m even if the price is half Tito's pay.
That's entirely different than all the karma whores going off about wasting ISS cash.
Lay off the karma, read the article, and think before you post... Christ.
Hmm, If you could send a postcard back, it might go somthing like: Having a wonderfull time. Weather is err, nonexistant - Sun is Scorching by day, but the nights are a tad chilly - My room has a Sea view - all of them!. Havent been able to venture away from the hotel however, The hotel manager advises it is a bit hostile outside.
To get the elite of America (who else could afford it), into their clutches for several weeks of insidious commie brainwashing.
To gain an insight into such a communist mindset, I would recommend looking for an obscure, often suppressed documentary (with Frank Sinatra re-enacting the lead role) called The Manchurian Candidate. It clearly shows the odious depths the malevolent commies will stoop to in order to destroy this great nation of ours.
If the CIA can't stop this, I would hope the INS would isolate returning Americans for several weeks to deprogram them from this insidious communist plot.
Thanks,
A concerned American who must post AC for my own safety.
It's important to understand that 'the Russians promoting capitalism does *not* mean the Russian Government, nor the Russian Space Agency, but rather MirCorp, a private corporation. NASA is a government agency, and forbidden by law to provide commercial services. (And why for gosh sakes do you want the Government involved in business? Their record on running businesses (Post Office, Amtrak) is rather spotty to say the least.)
Maybe if NASA ever decided that pretentious, high budget, high beurocracy projects like the Shuttle were the complete waste of money and resources that they were, we'd see more people in space.
The basic problem is in convincing Congress.
As it is, the money they waste on that inefficient POS would be far better spent elsewhere,
Yep, that's what Congress thinks as well. (And it' Congress that decides what money NASA gets, and how it is spent.) Instead Congress spends the money on welfare.
But since NASA haven't managed to come up with anything better in 20 years, they won't get rid of it in case they fall behind other agencies.
NASA has several times tried for something better, but Congress won't pay for it.
Well here's news for you - this shows the Russians are already light years ahead in terms of a sensible space policy! NASA should stop whooping it up and get down to some serious work.
Here's news for you.... you need to learn how the facts I've cited above before ranting. Got a problem with NASA? Take it to your Congressman. Want a better opportunity in space? Put your money where your mouth is and invest in one of the space startups. Rants help no one, especially ones so devoid of an understanding of the facts.
Hardly. NASA's budget is far less than 1% of the Federal budget.
As far as corporations go, who else is going to do the work? This isn't whipping out a Slashdot clone in somebodies back room. This kind of work requires real money, real skills, and real facilities.
<sarcasm>
Yeah! More millonares in space! I can see it now! Michael Jackson desperately chasing his nose around the ISS trying to catch it before it gets sucked into an airvent and ejected into space. What a dignified moment in the history of Space exploration. And come to think of it, hair burns alot faster in an oxygen rich enviroment don't it?
</sarcasm>
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Russia did build a shuttle clone for 10% of the cost of NASAs and it worked 100% too.
They made 2 or 3 I think.
for them to take someone else into space and leave them there?
For once, it's the Russians promoting capitalism rather than the US. After all, they've got trouble with a lack of funds, and rather than bleating to their Government about it, they've done the sensible thing - sold a service for a price people are willing to pay! If only NASA would take its head out of its ass and do something this sensible.
Maybe if NASA ever decided that pretentious, high budget, high beurocracy projects like the Shuttle were the complete waste of money and resources that they were, we'd see more people in space. As it is, the money they waste on that inefficient POS would be far better spent elsewhere, repairing the damage to the image NASA has with the American public after doing absolutely nothing for decades.
As it is, maybe Congress should cut their budget some more until they do tighten their belts. The Shuttle is a black hole in terms of funding, and in any corporation it would have been axed years ago. But since NASA haven't managed to come up with anything better in 20 years, they won't get rid of it in case they fall behind other agencies. Well here's news for you - this shows the Russians are already light years ahead in terms of a sensible space policy! NASA should stop whooping it up and get down to some serious work.
... "What can I get for a quarter?"
now, i only heard a friend mention this but apparently subsequent trips after the first tourist in space are going to be half the price. if this rate (only using a sample of two) continues, how long before space could be the most popular vacation destination?
'planet starbucks' indeed...
i was angry:1 with:2 my:4 friend - i told:3 4 wrath:5, 4 5 did end.
i was angry:1 with:2 my:4 friend - i told:3 4 wrath:5, 4 5 did end.
i was 1 2 4 foe i 3 it not 4 5 did grow
what's this have to do with a phone? probably some sf story i guess. but i'm not talking about fiction. this could happen, and life would be so different.
--how long till the operators are jailed for anime-induced pedophelia and
These guys are going to get scammed! After all, we all know that they aren't going into space, but are just going to be taken to a sound stage in Siberia.
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Stay in school, kids! Peace out, Dubya
Best Things and inventions have died of non commercialisation,
Space is one such turf, had there been a licencing to fly(for passenger) there wont be airlines
Environ friendly Solar energy is not utilised to its potential
let few people go up spend their honeymoon to space
they(space researchers) will have more mandate to do research and devlopment and lot more to explore
if nasa and guys(bad opinion scientists) dont interest people to go to space then why are they wasting taxpayers money which wont benefit citzens in any way
http://senthilnayagam.com/
Well, it seems the brainwashed here is somebody else. Maybe you should consider decaf and voting democrat next year. Even better, Drew, quit reading alt.alien.abductions, alt.elvis.sightings, and alt.conspiracy.theory.
My other OS is the MCP!
Russia invests in a huge catapult -PYves
I don't know about you, but the Soyuz capsule doesn't sound that inviting. Sure, you'd be in orbit, but I don't think you'd be able to apprecialte the effects of microgravity in what is essentially an oversized oil drum.
...er...room.
I mean, where the hell do you go if someone cuts one? At least on ISS you can leave the
Essentially you'd be paying $20 million for the great view. It's one hell of a view and I know I'd love to be able to see it, but how many will drop $20 million for the privelege? Especially if there's any possibility of better accomodations in a few years (if there's a willingness by the rich to do it, there'll definietly be more space tourism companies soon).
Willing to go if they drop the "million" part from the price tag,
-- If any of the above made sense, I assure it was purely by accident.
This is a very good thing. Years ago when commercial airplane flights first started, seats were generally very expensive and it was considered a rich mans mode of transportation. Eventually though the price came down and now just about everyone can take a plane almost anywhere. I hope this leads to a similar situation with space flights.
I'm a programmer, I don't have to spell correctly; I just have to spell consistently
On the topic of starbucks in space, take a look at this piece of breaking news
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
Of course, we would probably all die from a disease caught from a virulent telephone, but that's another story.
So Long...
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
It is from the HitchHiker's guide to the Galaxey 'trilogy', by the recently late Douglas Adams. The exact plot details escape me, but basically some distant planet (Golgafrinch?) built several great spaceships in order to escape an alleged impending disaster, and loaded the first one up with all their advertising executives and telephone sanitisers. The rest of the population was to follow on, see. Anyway, the first ship crashed on earth, and the elite class that remained behind got wiped out by a disease caught from a dirty telephone. The rule is: always clean that phone with your towel first.
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
I'll drink to that !!!
All i asked for was a freakin spinfuser and a jetpack...
Nasa should hold a national lottery for a ticket to ride the shuttle..solves their funding problems, good PR as well, as everyone regardless of income gets a chance to "ride" if they buy a ticket.