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Canadian Arrow Taking Applications for Astronauts
Christian Nally writes "The Canadian Arrow X-Prize team is taking applications for its X Prize attempt. It's going to be a show down between this group and many others including John Carmack's Armadillo. Let's hope that the X-Prize foundations 'end of 2004' deadline doesn't inspire people to cut corners on safety."
As any fule know... :-)
If we're postulating mass space tourism, we can probably get away with postulating efficient solar or fusion power to go with it... they're both pipe-dreams hovering somewhere in the technological middle-distance. Then you can have your hydrogen by electrolysis without trouble.
To make space tourism economic, we need to either (a) make it possible to get into orbit using far less energy, or (b) make energy available much more cheaply. So nobody's going up there without some major breakthrough that would massively reduce the resources required.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Jeez, you guys are so damn pessimistic. You're missing the whole point. Some teams will spend more than $10 million, the prize, to compete in this project. The objective is to find a cheap and easy way to get to space! Such a fantastic goal! And you all keep whining about safety.
Grow some balls.
If we're postulating mass space tourism, we can probably get away with postulating efficient solar or fusion power to go with it...
they're both pipe-dreams hovering somewhere in the technological middle-distance. Then you can have your hydrogen by
electrolysis without trouble.
To make space tourism economic, we need to either (a) make it possible to get into orbit using far less energy, or (b) make energy available much more cheaply. So nobody's going up there without some major breakthrough that would massively reduce the resources required.
That's only true of real mass-space tourism, something which is still some way off.
What's more likely,is the development of limited space tourism, for the very rich only... it has already started, and as the price drop a bit it will get more common.
Most likely, this will use traditional rocketry in a cheaper form, and it will polute a LOT. In particular, the upper atmosphere will suffer.
In short: if there is a way to make "cheap" space trips, space tourism will develop. Wherever it's polluting or not is sadly not the question.
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Wow... it's simply an updated V2. I think that's a brilliant idea. Those rockets hit the edge of space almost 60 years ago, so the technology is certainly easy to attain today. Plus, that design is probably more bug-free than something fresh off the drawing boards today.
I assume that the success itself is worth far more.
No.
The fuel cost is very, very low actually; less than $10/lb of payload.
I worked out that if I was to go into space, I'd have to spend about as much fuel putting me there, as my car burns in a year. But unlike my car I ain't doing this every week or even every year. The number of people going into space for the forseeable future is only a few thousand; the number of cars out there are incredibly high, in the hundreds of millions, so the relative environmental impact of rocketry is quite, quite negligible.
And there are plenty of space technologies that have a positive environmental impact. Would the ozone layer hole have been found without satellites? I actually believe that overall, space will have a very significant net positive environmental impact.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"... that the job application requires a non-refundable $75 fee?