Frequent Flyer Miles Take You to Space?

An anonymous reader writes "Pan Am might be gone and there isn't a Hilton in space yet, but you will soon be able to use your frequent flyer miles to at least come close to the final frontier. This article on SpaceRef.com details a new Space Adventures and US Airways partnership, where US Airways dividend miles may be cashed in for Space Adventures programs, most notably their sub-orbital flights that are expected to begin by 2005. Cost: only 10,000,000 miles. More reasonable totals can get you a zero-g parabolic flight, or a Mach 2.5 flight on a MiG-25. Space Adventures is the outfit that's been arranging trips to the ISS. One small problem though, is that they don't actually have a sub-orbital craft yet."

Comments

Bet those seats go quick.

[Yoda2]

The way the airlines are limiting the use of miles with blackout dates, etc., I'll probably have enough miles by 2005 to actually book a flight.

Good luck booking a suborbital on Thanksgiving though!

Re:Bet those seats go quick.

[sacherjj]

And it is a good idea to test the new sub-orbital craft with people who are buying with FF-miles, because they probably don't have the cash to purchase the actual ticket in the first place. This means that their family probably doesn't have the money to sue the company when the new test plane... umm... ...doesn't work.

But it doesn't say...

[dipfan]

.... how many air miles do you need for an upgrade to first class?

don't actually have a sub-orbital craft yet

[MrFredBloggs]

Jumbo jets are sub orbital. In fact, my mates scooter is, isnt it? Its certainly sub-light speed!

Re:don't actually have a sub-orbital craft yet

[Tom7]

hehe.

Oh my god! We're travelling at subsonic speeds!!

Re:don't actually have a sub-orbital craft yet

[radja]

>The Earth rotates and revolves faster than the speed of sound.

nope, speed of sound requires that sound actually can travel, which is bloody hard in space.

//rdj

Re:don't actually have a sub-orbital craft yet

[kwishot]

"If a tree falls over...."
=)

-kwishot

Hell no

[rho]

I'm not trading in 10 million miles for a spin on the Vomit Comet. What do they serve for refreshments, a kick in the groin?

10,000,000 miles?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Miles usually expire after a couple of years if you don't use them. For a two-year window, you'd have to fly over 13000 miles a day to earn 10,000,000 miles. Pilots don't get that much time in the air.

Re:10,000,000 miles?

[turg]

Miles usually expire after a couple of years if you don't use them. For a two-year window, you'd have to fly over 13000 miles a day to earn 10,000,000 miles.

In my experience, they expire if you do not earn any for a number of years. E.g. with American Airlines, your miles expire if you have not earned miles in the past three years -- but as long as you earn miles at least once every three years, none of your miles will ever expire.

Seeing as we're talking about USAirways, though, I'll take the 30 secods to look up their terms and conditions for Divendend Miles. Here's the relevant bit:

Beginning January 1, 2000, miles earned will not expire as long as any mileage earning or redemption activity occurs in your account within 36 months of the last account activity. Each qualifying activity on or after January 1, 2000, will extend the expiration date of all unexpired miles in your account for 36 months from the date of the qualifying activity. Dividend Miles earned through December 31, 1999 are not subject to expiration.

Re:10,000,000 miles?

[lw54]

Miles usually expire after a couple of years if you don't use them. For a two-year window, you'd have to fly over 13000 miles a day to earn 10,000,000 miles. Pilots don't get that much time in the air.

American Express Rewards Program gives a point for every dollar you spend and one can then transfer these points to a participating partner airline. Maybe they'll partner up so I only have to spend $10,000,000 on the amex this year...

More time in a plane. Great.

[Kushana]

I would imagine that after spending 10 million miles (400 times around the world) in a plane, the last thing I would want is to spend my miles on a plane trip.

Re:More time in a plane. Great.

[ghjm]

10 million frequent flyer miles does not equal 10 million actual traveled miles. You get all kinds of bonuses, double points for certain segments, points for staying in a hotel, points for renting a car, etc, etc. I have met sales reps with accounts in the millions of points. I don't think I've ever seen anyone with 10 million but it's less than an order of magnitude out.

Re:More time in a plane. Great.

[the_quark]

However, spending 10M miles on this is a rip-off. According to the Space Adventures web site, the sub-orbital trip is $98,000. Miles generally cost $.02 - $.03 retail (in other words, you could form a company, do a deal with USAirways, and buy miles for $.02/mile) which gives you a good benchmark for whether you should spend miles on something. For example, you can purchase membership to the US Airways Club for $375. You can also cash in miles to do it. I don't know how many miles it takes (it's not on their website, you have to call), but, if it's more than about 20k it's clearly not worth it. And, worse, even if it is 20k, you could spend that same 20k on upgrading a round-trip ticket to first class, which is probably worth about $1500 (even more if your ticket is really cheap). Since 20k miles costs you about $400, that means you make a profit on every mile of about $.055.

So, in any event, at 10M miles to go to space, that's about $200,000 of miles value. In perspective, you could get 500 round-trip first-class upgrades for 10M air miles, which would have a profit of $550,000 - the same tickets purchased with cash would've cost $750,000, but you got them for the low, low price of $200,000.

By comparison, the suborbital flight would cost $98,000 in cash, so using your miles is a LOSS, outright, not even including the "opportunity cost" of the $750,000 paper profit you could make by using them for first-class upgrades. Clearly they just set this up to get publicity and designed the system so that even if you had 10M miles, you'd use them on something else.

Wish USAirways would spend their time and money getting BLANKETS back in first class, not doing crap like this...*grumble grumble*

Overbooked

[macdaddy]

I'd hate to get overbooked on a space flight. You spend 3 months planning to leave your house and pets (and kids!) alone for a couple weeks and boom!, you find out that you're flight was overbooked 5:1 and you have to take an alternate flight in a year.

Exclusive Exclusivness

[pinkUZI]

...an exclusive new exclusive business agreement...

Now, will Space Adventures, Ltd. be exclusivly signing with any other exclusive business partners else or will this be an exclusivly exclusive relationship with US Airways?

Space Miles

[fruey]

Wow! So now I only have to like, travel round the world, whose circumference is appx 25,000 miles, like 400 times... to be able to go up once into space.

What kind of air traveller gets air miles that high? Even with credit card tie-ins and all that? If you have even 1,000,000 miles, tell me how you earned 'em!

Re:Space Miles

[Registered Coward v2]

1 million miles - 5 years at Delta's minimum Platnum Qualifying level - 100K/year, plus double miles as a bonus for being Platinum. Slightly more than 5 depending on how and when you qualify, less if you charge tickets on a credit card that gives miles, convert hotel points to miles,etc.

100k is about 40 coast to coast roundtrips - not all that much flying. I've seen 2 and three million milers on Delta - and I'm well on my way to my second million.

Excuse me

[Saint Aardvark]

But how can you use air miles to travel into space, which is clearly a vacuum?

A little more fact-checking in the future, please.

Hmmm...

[NiftyNews]

Hey Jeremy, who is this Lance Bass guy and why is he flying around the world 7 times next week?

The catch is..

[dimer0]

The blackout dates will KILL you - don't even try to become Mr Spaceman around the holidays.

Tourism In Space Will Never Work

[PhysicsGenius]

I want to visit space. I want to walk on the moon. I want to drink beer in a Martian bar. But I never will.

Why not? Because space tourism is unworkable. Sure, there's a big cost--that can be brought down (though not free, it takes a minimum of 400 gigajoules to lift 100 kg to 100 km above Earth). And it is complicated, but that can be simplified (although it will likely only become more and complex, think of the airline industry).

No, the real problem is health. In order to survive launch astronauts hhave to be in peak physical condition. More importantly, to avoid bone loss and fluid redistribution problems they also have to exercise rigorously during their entire trip. Is the average, fat, camera-wielding, mickey-mouse hat-wearing American tourist(TM) going to pass either of these requirements? No.

And until Joe Blow can take a "Space Cruise" the price and complexity won't fall enough for me to visit there either, even though I am a prime physical specimen.

Re:Tourism In Space Will Never Work

[decipher_saint]

"bone loss"

"Excuse me, stewardess? I beleive I had 206 bones when I boarded, now I only have 198 and this packet of crisps, I will never fly Delta again!"

Re:Tourism In Space Will Never Work

[ZigMonty]

In the very early days of flight people were making similar claims to the ones you're making now. "Flying across the atlantic will only be for the very rich and then only if they're fit."

In order to survive launch astronauts hhave to be in peak physical condition.

You do realise that there is no fundamental reason why launches have to be so hard on the astronauts. It's just cheaper to make the acceleration more violent and get into space more quickly.

More importantly, to avoid bone loss...

You're assuming that once in space they would be in constant zero g. You could always spin the craft tethered to its booster and just give them a taste of zero g rather than enduring it for the whole trip. I think I'd go up for the view mostly and just the thrill of being in space. If I wanted zero g, I'd book a flight on the vomit comet.

I think 2005 is a little optimistic. I'd say that by ~2015, space tourism will be in full swing. IMHO, it'll take one of the big players (ie. Boeing) to make it happen.

Re:Tourism In Space Will Never Work

[Tackhead]

> > "bone loss"
>
> "Excuse me, stewardess? I beleive I had 206 bones when I boarded, now I only have 198 and this packet of crisps, I will never fly Delta again!"

"Where do you think the crisps for the passengers on the next flight come from?"

Re:Tourism In Space Will Never Work

[Peyna]

I don't know about needing to be in peak physical condition, we shot John Glenn up there when he was pretty old, he might have be in better shape than most people his age, but I bet he wasn't in that great of shape.

Re:Tourism In Space Will Never Work

[arsaspe]

Most of the health problems from space are due to the fact that you are in perpetual freefall, thus you experience no gravity, so your body slows regeneration of bone and muscle. If a space station was built that rotated fast enough, you could simulate enough gravity to slow that down to acceptable levels. (Although it would be hard to simulate earth gravity). Mars has 2/3 the gravity as earth, so you could stay there long term without too much trouble if you could find a way to get there faster (currently takes about a year for space probes). The moon only takes a few days, but the 1/9th gravity wouldn't be enough to stop bone and muscle decay.

Miles

[Registered Coward v2]

Other than the space flight, the other awards aren't that unreasonable - @250K for a "zero-g" flight, that's in the realm of a FF's single year total (assuming 125k of actual miles and the 100% bonus miles for being chairman's perferred). Delta has had similar premium offers - tyopically high end vacations or a chance to fly a 757 simulator. Since FF programs are intended to attract and retain the most profitable segement of the flying public, most airlines offer their top tier fliers special opportunities.

Re:Miles

[Tackhead]

> Delta has had similar premium offers - tyopically high end vacations or a chance to fly a 757 simulator.

"Why yes, Abdul, you earned so many frequent flyer points from all those last-minute first-class one-way tickets you bought last year, of course you can fly the 757 sim! Where to, sir, lower Manhattan or DC?"

Not only would space tourism cut launch costs, I'd say putting Abdul on a Russian RLVs that has yet to be designed, let alone flight-tested, would be safer for all of us :-)

What would be really cool

[Deanasc]

Not that I could book a free space flight with earthly miles but get earthly miles for a trip in space.

How many miles did the shuttle travel in the last 11 days? I'm too lazy to look it up but let's say it's a lot, in the 100,000's. How many first class upgrades could I get for that kind of travel. It would take some of the sting out of the high price of space travel today.

Re:What would be really cool

[oo7tushar]

If it takes 90 minutes to orbit the earth and it was there for 11 days then...176 orbits of ze planet.
12760 km around the equator (that's 7926 miles). They're orbiting 350 km up (hubble is there, to avoid air friction). So the radius of the earth is 2030 km, add 350 to that = 2380km, multiply by 2pi = 14954 km every 90 minutes (one orbit). Thereby giving us 14954*176=2631904 km or 1644940 miles.
Which means that NASA needs 10 more hubble repair missions and they get a free flight (all they gotta do is put the airlines logo on the shuttle).

Re:What would be really cool

[oo7tushar]

I apologise the diameter of the earth is 12760 not the circumference (noted in a reply to the original post by an anonymous coward...please mod that one up)

That makes an orbital distance of 13460 km from the center of the earth...42286 km per orbit. Or 7442336 km in the last mission, aka 4.65 million miles.

What happened to PanAm's res. list to the moon?

[jpellino]

When 2001 came out, PanAm was flooded with calls - and one day someone had the inspiration to stop slamming the phone down and take names. From what I remember, there was some nominal (hundreds? thousand?) fee to get on the reservation list for PanAm's first flight to the moon - whenever it would be. I further recall that when PanAm dissolved, they had to do something with this list so that the dollars they were given in 1969 were accounted for... Anyone else got better details on this? I doubt I dreamed it but IO know this isn't the whole story...

Re:What happened to PanAm's res. list to the moon?

[turg]

jpellino wrote:

Anyone else got better details on this?

http://www.retrofuture.com/moontrip.html

burning karma

[lubricated]

because of crap like this
I'm burning my karma and leaving forever

Pan Am isn't gone...

[nolesrule]

They are back now, probably under different ownership, but flying mostly regional flights in the North East and in Florida.

Pan Am's Website

I live near the St. Pete-Clearwater Airport and one day I was driving by and I saw a Pan Am plane at one of the gates. I was shocked, since I hadn't seen one in years. Apparently, they have been making flights for 2-1/2 years.

Re-check your information source.

[Christopher Thomas]

It would seem that your source is in error about a few of these points:

Sure, there's a big cost--that can be brought down (though not free, it takes a minimum of 400 gigajoules to lift 100 kg to 100 km above Earth).

Energy to lift something to a given altitude (not orbit) is force * distance. 100 kg feels 1000 N from the Earth's pull. 100 km is 1.0e5 metres. Energy required to lift 100 kg to 100km (and stationary above Earth's surface) is 100 megajoules - or what you'd get from about $5 US worth of gasoline (or less) at perfect efficiency.

Energy to put something into orbit fairly close to Earth's surface (LEO) is the binding energy (half the gravitational potential energy of an object on the Earth's surface). GPE is -m1m2G/r, or 6e24 * 6.7e-11 / 6.5e6 = 62 MJ/kg for an object sitting on the Earth's surface. This gives a theoretical minimum of 31 MJ/kg to put something in low earth orbit, or 3.1 gigajoules for a 100kg object.

You'd get this by burning around $150 US worth of gasoline at perfect efficiency and magically imparting all of the resulting energy to the cargo.

Space travel is expensive because our rockets a) lift their fuel with themselves and b) impart a lot of energy to the outgoing exhaust instead of to the craft itself. At perfect efficiency, getting into space would be quite cheap.

Re:Re-check your information source.

[Christopher Thomas]

I believe there is not only the problem of how much energy is needed to attain altitude, but the exit velocity is a factor. To leave the atmosphere, a certain velocity is needed to prevent either:

a) bouncing off the edge of the atmosphere
or
b) burning up during exit

You actually want to be moving as slowly as possible while you're in dense atmosphere, because you shed energy as the cube of your airspeed.

Burning up and bouncing are mainly concerns on re-entry, because you start off going at a far greater speed than would be practial to reach at low altitudes. While you're climbing to orbit, wasting your fuel by pushing against air is the main concern (well, that and pressure changes mucking with your rocket nozzle efficiency).

For perfect efficiency, build a magnetic launcher on a 50-mile-high track ;). I'm not claiming it's easy to reach perfect efficiency - just that very low costs to orbit are theoretically possible.

Re:Admiral's Club

[macdaddy]

Well at least the moderator's agreed with my saying my post was OT. Schmucks.

PRESS RELEASE: Time Tourism

[Alsee]

PRESS RELEASE
Date Released: Monday, February 29, 2002
Time Tourism

Pan American World Airways and Time Tourism to Offer the Ultimate Destination: Earth's History

Pan American World Airways and Time Tourism, Ltd., have formed an exclusive new exclusive business agreement where Pan American's MileHigh Club members will have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to earn and redeem frequent flyer miles for travel to the ultimate tourist destination -- Earth's History. Pan American is the world's first airline to offer mileage accrual and redemption for time travel.

In addition to actual time travel, Pan American's MileHigh Club miles can be earned and redeemed for Time Tourism's time stasis experience and time leaps, as well as chrononaut led time-bus launch tours.

"Pan American and Time Tourism have created an incredible opportunity that only can be imagined by most people today," said Pan American Senior Vice President of Marketing John M. Bloodworth. "We are delighted to join with Time Tourism in this historical endeavor."

"We are proud to have Pan American as Time Tourism's official domestic airline," said John W. Booth, President and CEO of Time Tourism. "We look forward to taking their passengers back to the future."

Pan American's MileHigh Club members can earn and redeem miles through participating in any of the following Time Tourism's programs:

Bus Launch Tours: With a chrononaut as host, MileHigh Club members can experience the thrill of a live countdown disappearance at the Quale Time Center in Wyoming.

Time Stasis Experience: Participants can experience a timeless eternity just like the chrononauts at the formerly top secret Doctor Mengele Dental Training Center in Auschwitz, Germany.

24 Hour Time Leap: Expert anesthetists take participants on a leap 1 day into their own future.

Time Travel: Time Tourism will offer MileHigh Club members a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel through time! Participants will be able to climb aboard a sub-temporal timecraft and phase to a velocity of C (186,000 miles per second), experience several minutes of timelessness and see the Earth through history. Upon return to the present, participants earn their chrononaut watches! Despite the doubts of our engineers, management is confident that service will begin sometime tomorrow.

For more information about this unique opportunity, please visit www.panam.com or www.zombo.com. Temporal Tourism, Ltd., the world's leading time tourism company, offers a wide range of temporal experiences, from time stasis experience and 24 hour time leaps, chrononaut training and time travel qualification programs on Earth, to actual voyages through time. Time Tourism has provided clients like Amelia Earheart and Jimmy Hoffa with the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fly to the Intertemporal Station. With offices in Bermuda, Miami Fl, and San Juan Puerto Rico, Space Adventures is developing a U.S.-based timeport from which passenger sub-temporal space flights will begin operations real soon now. For more information about Time Tourism, visit www.zombo.com or call 202-347-4833.

Pan American World Airways has 64 years of expeience in providing quality air travel since 1927. First American airline to operate a permanent international air service. First airline to develop and use instrument flight techniques. First airline to operate scheduled transpacific passenger and mail service. First airline to operate scheduled transatlantic passenger and mail service. First airline to complete a round-the-world flight. First airline to operate jets with the continental US. First airline to relay inflight messages via satellite. Pan Am is certainly one of the greatest airlines in history.

###

Contact information:

Pan American World Airways
John M. Bloodworth
800-359-7262

Time Tourism Ltd.
John W. Booth
202-347-4833

-

Re:Supersonic available now

[Tackhead]

> A flight in a Mig25 sounds a lot more fun though! Does anyone know of any rich owners of IT comapnies who give lifts?

No, but for the next-best thing - prop-driven (and cheap) head-to-head dogfighting, there's Air Combat Canada in Southern Ontario and Fighter Combat in Arizona. For about $1000 US, customers get a full day of training and fly an unlimited-class aerobatic aircraft with a former F-18 pilot as a backseater.

It ain't supersonic (I guess it's kinda hard to do that in US airspace, and our military pilots have enough funding to maintain and fuel their aircraft without tourist dollars ;-), but it sounds like a hellacious amount of fun.

How many miles do I get for a suborbital flight?

[magic]

I'd be more excited to see how many miles I can get for a flight like this. I mean, if you take a real orbital flight do you get 24,000 miles every time you go around the earth?

-m

In the future...

[epsalon]

Customer: I'd like to cash in some frequent flyer miles I've collected.
Sales rep: No problem, sir. What direction will you be flying?
Customer: Up.
Sales rep: Sorry, say again?
Customer: Up. To space. To the sky.
Sales rep: Hmm... I'm not sure if it's in the list of destinations here. Are you sure it's available
Customer: Sure I'm sure. I read it on SlashDot!
Sales rep: Slashwhat?
Customer: Nevermind.

[Kinda reminds me of a scene from "Flight of the Navigator"...]

They don't, but these guys do

[Once&FutureRocketman]

The EZ-Rocket.