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Mike Melvill Chosen To Fly SpaceShipOne
ansimon writes "Mike Melvill is chosen to fly SpaceShipOne to the outer limits of this rock that we call earth. Mike will be the first to earn his astronaut wings with a privately-developed aeroplane/rocket. A new era of space exploration is about to begin! Godspeed and come back safe, so the rest of us can go too..."
For one who's done a lot of reading of both science fiction as well as cosmology, the stars seem so far out of reach for my short lifetime.
Getting into space isn't exactly reaching the stars, but it's the first step on the journey. I hope the mission goes smoothly and its success is a sign of things to come.
So far, I have seen some people posting stuff related to Melville dying. This is poor taste.
I honestly hope that Melville completes this first trip unharmed. Not only for his sake, but for our sake. If he dies, the government will more than likely shut the whole private space exploration business down and set humanity back by an untold amount of years.
Why would anyone wish harm upon someone trying to pave the waqy for the rest of us?
First manned vehicle.
We need to start NOW if we want to have 40 million people on the moon by 2371...
I am guessing your math doesn't include any births on the moon, so it would be done sooner. Besides, you put just 50 men and women in low g, several are going to at least be curious about sex.
On another note...It will be very expensive to go into space as a passenger for a while, but I think they need to focus on their market: Rich internet dot.commers who want to have sex in space. Just like VCRs, the Internet, and video cameras, the first people who want to go into space have to be doing it for some reason tied to sex, and willing to pay full price, making it cheaper for the rest of us eventually.
I'm not completely sure how this will work, but just about any new technology is always paid for by people wanting pr0n/sexchat/etc so why would this be any different? Would you pay $100,000 to get a bj in zero gravity?
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
That would be a hell of a lot more likely if he were going up in the shuttle. I'd take my luck going into space (though this is just a suborbital flight) with a ship designed by Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites over something built by NASA whose design decisions have more to do with red tape and beaurocracy than technical merit.
Is that really fair to say? Sure, NASA has had its share of red-tape screwups, and some tragic erros, but don't overlook what they *have* done.
I'm guessing sex in low g might not be all it's cracked up to be. Imagine spinning around and around and around, not exactly the best time to be getting motion sickness eh? ::)
-- taking over the world, we are.
If these folks built this thing for peanuts (compared to NASA budgets), NASA will seem ridiculously ineffective. Like a giant corporation where no one gives a crap about what they're doing and comes to work every day not to do something to change the world, but to collect the paycheck every two weeks.
It's not like they deserve this kind of treatment, but the question will be raised for sure.
I've never been all that excited about the space program; I missed those years by a decade. I worked for a PhD that was part of the Apollo program; he left NASA when he realized that he would never get to fly in space. He was right, so long as it was being run by governments - only the elite of the elite would ever have that honour, and even then, only while there was political interest.
Looking at pictures taken from the edge of space make my spine tingle - especially when they're taken by what amounts to a shoestring budget done by private enterprise. Pictures are one thing; tomorrow if all goes to plan, private enterprise will have put a man up there at the edge of space. Maybe not in orbit; I'm sure that will come in time.
I can't imagine what it must feel like to look up and see black, then look down and see the glowing blue curvature of the earth.
If you're reading this Mike, and everyone at Scaled Composites, you did a damn good job and we'll be waiting for your safe landing!
..don't panic
While they are huge and a lot of money is no doubt wasted internally, they're doing "one of a kind" and "state of the art" stuff, and this is always expensive.
It's not exactly easy to quantify their impact on our daily lives, but if you watch TV, use cell phone and/or pager, or GPS you see your tax dollars at work pretty much. None of these things would be easy or even possible without NASA.
Saying that NASA is too expensive is like saying that Wright brothers had wasted too much money on their first crappy airplane. Sure they did, but it was the FIRST working airplane. These days any fool can build a working airplane out of readily available parts. Back then it was state of the art.
It sure did cost billions to send rovers to Mars, too. And it's not something anyone else will be able to achieve within the next decade.
This costs a lot. Can NASA be improved? No doubt. Is the cost justified even given the current inefficiencies? It sure as heck is.
Define Irony: all Slashdotters cheering for a company taht was (almost) fully funded by blood money of Evil Empire of Micro$oft.
P.S. best of luck and successful flight to Mike and SS1 people.
-DVK
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
What's the significance of the first black guy in space? Seriously?
We note the first Chinese guy in space, but not the first East-Asian in space. Do you know who the first blonde person in space was? The first person with green eyes?
The reason your country has such an issue with racism STILL is that you create such significance in skin colour, where really there should be none.
Score:-1, Funny