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

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!

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.

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-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: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.