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New Russian Space Station 'Real Possibility'
su-geek writes: "BBC is reporting that the Russians are looking into the feasibility of a commercial space station. The Station would be used to promote space tourism and would help pay for future supply missions to the ISS." I think they should get into the business of crashing space stations into the Pacific, and bringing tourists on boats to watch the fireworks.
Those numbers are highly speculative I would have to say. Energia is saying they can have it in orbit by 2004 at a cost of around 100 million dollars. If this was the case, instead of buying a trip on Mir (ended up being ISS) for 20 million I think Tito and a few friends simply would have bought there own space station in the sky. I remember Hilton Hotels were backing there own initiative to build there own hotel in space. Maybe these folks could get together and buy one together. Heres a link about Hilton Hotels discussing building a hotel in space.
All that said, when the opportunity presents itself, I'll be up there!
bbh
The sad thing about space travel is that it is currently being used for science. Don't mistake me here though - I happen to think that science is the best possible use for space programs, if anything there is not enough money to go around for scientific research in any field.
Currently, the only real "business" in putting things into space is in military hardware and communications satelites. If "big business" gets involved in space tourism, (and here is the key!) and space tourism becomes profitable, more advancements into space travel will be achived. It is ironic really, that profit will create a drive for better space accesability than research does.
The more trips that there are into space, the more the process will become streamlined - and the greater the economic drive to make it less expensive to get people into space.
And finally, just like the article mentions - space tourists coule cover much of the cost of space missions. This would allow for more research to take place in space.
All in all. It is about time.
Now if we were only able to put nuclear powered spaceships in space (such as the "Orion" design mentioned by Carl Sagan in Cosmos) and have craft capable of 1/10 the speed of light.
Perhaps someday.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
I'm amazed that a country with NO money continually spends their debt on failing space programs, whereas a country with a high level of affluence and world influence shows continuing dis-interest in what its very own citizens realize as important, if not somewhat boring these days.
Father: "I grew up in the space age."
Son: "You mean that use to be a big thing? Ohhh..."
Russia SHOULD rather be focusing on rebuilding their ruined country. A place where doctors are paid in trade by the government (salt, cow dung, whatever -- and no i'm not kidding). A place with an unstable government and a weak military. What is in space that they are after, exactly?
Meanwhile, America should of course be embracing space more, but we're barely willing to increase NASA's budget beyond annual inflation.
On the other hand, it looks like we won't even be able to afford a valuable education bill without dipping heavily into social security, so maybe space can wait.
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Newsflash: intriguing new results of a survey indicate that /. audience is not at all uniformly white, protestant, and american, as it was being envisioned by the editors.
"It was a real eye-opener," says Hemos, one of the members of the editing staff, "to realize that some of my dumber comments can be perceived as offensive in some other parts of the world."
"Of course," he added after a bit of thought. "Not like we care about those unwashed filthy pigs in their silly little countries, anyway."
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
I tried submitting information on just this issue several hours ago and it got rejected. Anyway here's the scoop I had.
MirCorp, despite the ditching of their namesake, is still in the business of space tourism. They have proposed a new space station dubbed "Mini Station 1", which would house 3 space tourists for upto 20 days at a time. They hope to make a commercial venture of it through corporate endorsements and giving clients with ultra deep pockets an out of this world vacation. This news story gives additional response from the Russian Space Agency and the spacecraft builder Energia.
The runway at Baikonur has just been refurbished, this is the runway that was built specifically for the Buran and AN225.
Reportadly Buran is virtually ready to fly with very little work, strap on an Energia and boosters roll her out to the pad and jump on in.
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Reminds me of the story of the "space pen". At the dawn of the space age, astronauts needed the ability to write in zero gravity environments. The trouble is that the ball point pen needs gravity to work. NASA spent a million bucks (in the 1960s, when that was still a lot) developing the "space pen" which can write in space (or upside down back here on Earth).
Facing the same problem, the Soviets used pencils.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
But next time Taco Bell should use a 400x400 MILE target instead of 40x40 foot.
It would also be cool if the target were housing as many Chihuahuas as they could fit on it.
> [...]
> Facing the same problem, the Soviets used pencils.
For the first few missions, yes. Then the Soviets went to Fisher (the American company that made the pens) and bought several cases. The reason is that pencils produce a lot of graphite dust. When you are locked in a room the size of a telephone booth for a week, you don't want graphite dust floating around, getting into your lungs, eyes and your equipment.
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I'm all down for the commercial modernization though, like having 8 space port doors to pull up some space busses, like a big Boeing 877 space bus, and the McDonalds and Wendy's module.
When we get tired of doing research, take a quick spin (literally) to the Blockbuster Module and rent some DVDs. I'd like to see how they keep the movies on the shelves from spinning. They could also have night clubs and stuff to party and get yo' groove on.
They could even build station interconnects, so that you can link Russian and US stations together. So you can vacation on the other station when you run out of entertainment. But definitely, they should have some type of "shell" module that companies could buy to run their own consumer businesses in space.
Museums, hotels.. all the stuff to make an interesting time. And you'd have to have some satellite TV to watch (can you get DirecTV from the space station? guess you'd need a special dish) No casinos, because you wouldn't want to be broke on a space station. Pay up or Vinny will shoot your ass out the bathroom hatch.
OK, I guess I'll lay off the crack now.
-Pat
Urban Lengend
To sumarise, NASA needed a pen that wouldn't:
Burn in 100% oxygen atmosphere
Would work in a vacuum
Work under zero-G
Could work in +150c and -120c
Prior to using the pen, the Americans also used pencils. Pencils had problems with the tips breaking off, which could be a hazard.
In December of 1967 Paul C. Fisher, the inventer of the pen, sold 400 of them to NASA for $2.95 each.