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More on Inflatable Space Hotels
StJefferson writes "It's anything but a traditional Budget Suites room, with a price tag projected to be somewhere in the range of US$50,000-100,000 per night. But Bob Bigelow's inflatable space habs will get their first trial next November, and are expected to go into production in 2008. There's even speculation that Bigelow is in talks with Burt Rutan regarding the small problem of getting customers to the door of his high-flying outposts. And the best part? Bigelow's doing this all on his own, as a private entrepreneurial venture. He's only answerable to his wife regarding the wisdom of this investment, and 'so far, she's on board.' Remind you Heinlein fans of anyone?" We've mentioned this guy before.
Bigelow has put a lot of thought into what space tourists would do while they're up there--everything from laser light shows on the dark side of the moon to phone calls placed to envious friends back home, to short space walks.
Phone call to friend: "Hey man, I am watching a KILLER laser light show at a Pink Floyd concert where they are playing on the dark side of the moon!"
MOONUNIT 555-555-1969
Friend: "The spoofed CallerID from your VoIP Asterik box is getting old and lay off the acid man, you're going to rot your brain. Next you are going to be telling me that you paid $1 million to spend a weekend in an inflatable hotel room in space."
But the question on everyone's minds is:
Will it be full of colourful balls and do you have to take your shoes off before going in?
"Curiouser and Curiouser" - Alice
Cheers,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
include a Free Continental breakfast, or I'm not going.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
What is there to do in space? I would love to go into space but really, what the hell are you supposed to do there once you get bored with taking pictures out the tiny porthole?
Don't get me wrong, I am glad to see that private industry is getting into space since the government is doing it's typical job of constantly cutting funding for science and diverting it to better and more efficient ways to kill people. The question is really how many people can pay to go to space and what will they do there?
won't be going there before the space limo service is launched.
Won't somebody please think of the Karma!
200 mile high club?
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I hope the material they use is micro-meteorite proof.
--<POP>--
-- bleep - bleep - bleep
If they would make that and NASA used it, they would be plenty rich with all the fame to go with it.
Without that, their inventions are like thought experiments... they'd be better off conducting the Schrodinger's Cat experiment with two ants.
The only thing more dangerous than a file named -rf is renaming it -rf\ /
The first test flight of Bigelow Aerospace will use the cheap Falcon V launcher that is currently developed by Elon Musk, the former owner of paypal. So there is a good cooperation between the different private companies in the alt.space community.
Private property is the central institution of a free society (David Friedman)
These things don't seem to have very thick walls. I always thought the space habitats would eventually be those giant doughnuts or cylinders, because they would have enough material in them to cut the radiation down to something like high altitudes on earth.
I think the first few real spaceships we build will look like two small iron submarines hung from each other via long steel cables, spinning around to make an artificial gravity.
Why would you fly up to some bubble thing washed in radiation ? Unless it was to build the bigger safer one, of course.
It's good to finally see some of the benefits of the capitalist system making their way into attempts at space travel. I imagine Bigelow (and the people running SpaceShipOne, and any other Entrepreneurs In Space) will achieve better and faster results, too, since his (their) own money is on the line...which is kind of the point of letting the money run things instead of doing it because the government wants to put a flag on the moon just to stick it to those commie Russians.
Bob Bigelow? Thats a used car salesman name if I've ever heard one. Coming soon: Bob Bigelow's used inflatable Space habitats.
Pea...tear...Griffin? Yea, yea, Peter Griffin.
I wonder what sorta deals priceline.com will offer?
.00
1-Star Space Orbital
4-Star Deluxe
3-Star Upscale
2½-Star Moderate-Plus
2-Star Moderate
1-Star Economy
Name Your Own Price $
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
"I hope the material they use is micro-meteorite proof."
they have that covered... they're bringing a micro-bruce-willis
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Any accountants out there?
Would it be possible to mount some scientific equipment in it, send scientists up for free occasionally, and write a portion off on the corporate taxes?
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
"Hey, that space hotel kinda looks like a....
Johnson, come take a look, it looks like it has two big...
Nuts! get your nuts here... whoh, look at the huge....
Willy? Willy Nelson? can I get your Autograph?.. hey, look at the....
"
Until the first rocket explodes or the first habitat depressurisation leads to an unpleasant death for everyone on board. It is an exciting development but I think it will be a hard sell after the first accident. Fair play to the guy for trying though and if I had that sort of cash I would be tempted despite the risks.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
those "tourist" type of space journal just doesnot make sense from science part, can he build a factory in space to produce some special crystal, do medical or other research?
Because rich entrepreneurs have so effectively shown us their skill with balloon based schemes. Here's hoping he does better than Branson!
I hope they find a way to get the stink of sex out of those things... perhaps after every visitor depressurize it into space or something.
peace,
-Grokent
the phrase 'space hotel' and variants like 'spays hotale' to the block words in your spam blocker
Even though they are not very often seen in space, I always stay at one of Hilbert's Hotel.
><////>
Wow, god forbid you say anything bad about "Gods" like Burt Rutan, Steve Jobs, etc. Burt Rutan's craft is not solving anything. Sorry to disappoint the mods.
This work will aid in the development of non-terrestrial ecosystems (which will likely be Living Machines), but we still don't have a solid way to combat bone density loss - and artificial gravity (rotational) systems won't always be feasible. They're great for orbit, but they such for travel. The human proprioceptice system is so sensitve that it can detect inertial differences in the frame of reference. There's probably few better ways to give your entire crew vertigo than to put their bodies into hibernation in a artifical gravity environment that's in motion!
;)
I'll post more as my grad studies develop
.
-shpoffo
Of course, someone might be worried about profitability, too, but that's a different issue.
I wonder if they'll have inflatable escorts?
:)
Some slashdotters will feel right at home
"I'm not a procrastinator, I'm temporally challenged"
Read this and put a flaming sock in it.
So why is Burt Rutan suddenly the go-to guy for all things space-related
It's kind of like the Wrights and Curtis becoming "go to" guys for travel, even though they could move maybe two people 50 miles and everyone knew that Cunard Lines and Leland Stanford's railroads could actually accomplish real transportation.
An alliance between pioneers in a field only makes sense; who's to say Rutan won't have an orbital vehicle in 10 years? Be kind of useless without a destination.
Another origin of things like the $500 hammer, is almost always lineitem allocation of overhead.
Suppose NASA contracts to Missile And Rocket Systems to provide some enormous system, including among other things: A rocket engine, and a hammer. MARS subcontracts out the rocket engine and a hammer to Engines and Hammers, Inc. E&H bills MARS $1,000,005 for one rocket engine ($1,000,000) and one hammer ($5).
MARS adds their 10% overhead for managing the E&H contract, and bills NASA at $1,100,006. Now, because of a policy called Line-item allocation, the overhead has to be prorated, not over the COST of the contract lineitems, but the COUNT ... So, the $100,001 in overhead gets divided in two ... the rocket engine cost NASA $1,050,000 .. and the hammer a staggering $50,006!
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
The Inflatable space hotel will not float on the earth's atmosphere. It will be placed in a geo synchronous orbit, just like IIS.
So why is Burt Rutan suddenly the go-to guy for all things space-related
Because, while what he has achieved might not be everything, nobody else has achieved more without government backing.
Hillary darling, please beleve me, all those are lies, I never took that woman to any hotel on the earth, really.
839*929
The X-prize is not about reaching orbit, and SpaceShipOne was built specifically to win the X-prize.
The thing did not enter orbit. HTH. HAND.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
First: they are going for the prize soon.
Second: they *have* (despite your rant) fixed the problem.
Third: The space shuttle can't do it on it's own either.
Fourth: You're a troll.
Frank Zappa's son is Dweezil.
Moon Unit is his daughter
But yeah, that's what I was wondering.
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
While you ignore the very important distinction that what the Wrights did had never been done before. Burt Rutan poorly re-inventing the wheel so a couple of libertarians could prove some kind of point about the "free market" when everybody else has been going into orbit and coming back for years is not even close to the significance of what the Wrights did.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
I'd do her anytime, anywhere.
Yes, Spaceship One is not a Spaceship, it's a Spaceplane, true. NASA confirms this in their article on their own space plane, which bested spaceship one's mark forty years ago for roughly the same amount of money (adjusted for inflation) but without all the near-death control problems.
But you're missing the point. Yes, they still need orders of magnitude more power to reach orbit, and YES, they haven't solved any of the major problems relating to actual spaceflight. And yes, all they have to do to solve their engineering problems is call NASA, because it's all been done before.
But what you're missing is, everyone has to start somewhere. And this is capitalism's first, impressive start.
Get a grip!
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
TransHab was killed because of politics, pure and simple. Congress was so irate at the cost overruns of the ISS that they stupidly forbade NASA from doing any further research or development on inflatable structures. The Houston Press did a story on this a few years ago.
I can't wait to go fish the big two-sided river. (Jerry Oltion, Analog Feb 89)
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
Bob Bigelow.... Space Gigalo
People will of course try to earn some money back by shooting some amateur porn while they are there.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight. ;-)
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
Private sector access to space is nowhere NEAR ready! A "Space Hotel" needs to be placed in ORBIT, not just the 100km flea jump the X prize needs. Rutan's SS1 will almost certainly win the X prize in the near future, but it was designed SPECIFICALLY to win the X prize & is a dead end for access to orbit. Other entrants in the X prize such as Xcor & Armadillo may be beaten to the punch by SS1, but they have a much better chance of being adaptable to an orbital rocket.
SS1 reaches Mach 3 at maximum speed. Even if you could swap the rocket motor in SS1 with one which can reach orbit, neither SS1 nor it's mothership are big enough to carry it. In order to attain orbit Mach 25+ is needed and the difficulties (notably thermal protection issues) mount at the cube of the mach. Reentry heating is almost a non issue for SS1, but as the last shuttle flight showed is A MAJOR PROBLEM when returning from orbit.
I wish it was different but we'll need at least another decade & probably more before private access to space become a reality beyond the souped up sounding rockets that the X prize contestants represent.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
but is there wifi and will my powerbook work up there?
Yeah I'd definitely like to be orbiting in something inflatable with all the space junk of the last 45 years and assorted meteors flying around at 160,000mph.
A guy is in space for 6 months... his testicles are still working, right? They have to have some solution, or they'd just have a bunch of nocturnal emissions on their space blankets.
Yes this is a silly question, but I'm not trying to make a joke, I am genuinely curious.
The only thing more dangerous than a file named -rf is renaming it -rf\ /
Rutans ship gets to 62 miles.
If a skyhook can be dropped down to 62 miles from say 120-140 mile orbit then all that is needed is to attach to it. The result is a momentum transfer from the orbiting skyhook to the ship. The result is the ship is now in a much higer orbit. The skyhook can take its time regaining its momentum (ion drive, using nitrogen from the athmosphere).
The skyhook would have two extensions - 60 to 80 miles long rotating around a solar powered hub (relatively massive, gyros to maintain the rotating extensions, fuel for ion engines, elevators for extension repair, refueling...).
This gives a suborbital plane the ability to reach orbit for relatively low cost.
If you complain about the cost, then I agree, but we must be realistic too. It will be costly for a while.
If you complain that it's useless, then it only means it's useless for you, which really is a non-problem.
If you're complaining that resources could be used in a better way to solve problems at home, then how much are you donating to worthy causes every month? I would expect that you would donate so much that you only keep what you need to survive and nothing more. After all, it can be used in other, better ways, right?
Oh, and of course noone will complain about the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the military, every year worldwide. No, that's ok. But to develop peaceful space technology? No that's a waste.
Is this guy Bruce Bigelow's cousin?
Hmmm, and my wife thinks I spend a lot of money! I can only wonder what his wife must have said when he first started talking about his plans. Well good luck to him!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Ok, with all the hype about a mile high club, what are the odds that people will pay $100k/night to boink in zero or near-zero gravity?
It sure as hell sounds more fun than going to Niagara Falls...
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
100k per night for a hotel room you can afford to blow another 100k on a few hookers and a penguin and fuck your brains out.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
OK, A less expensive valve is one thing, but . . .
Bigelow was able to purchase a life support system from a German company. The complete system cost only $1.3 million. If he had purchased the same system from American companies, it would have cost in the neighborhood of $100 million, he says.
Anyone else uncomfortable with living in a space-vehicle with a cut-rate life support system?!
I thought we had tons of debris flying around in orbit. Wouldn't said debris rip right through the necessarily thin skin of this thing? Is this "hab" too low to be affected? What am I missing?
Fifth: Everyone on /. with a suborbital space plane raise your hand. (you don't need to be orbiting anything to be in space!).
Hold on, I've got to get my patent attorney on the phone...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It should be interesting to see who he'll catch on film not responding to odd questions. Or at least whose answers he edits out.
Has anyone heard of problems with these space hotels? Is the service good? How are the restaurants? Is the pool heated?
Do you suppose a private enterprise which develops this system themselves would be able to offer the 'Transhab' design back to NASA after they have tested it?
This could enable NASA to buy a Transhab module less the development cost.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Last I heard, there were millions of millionaires in the US. They're the target market. Assume only 1% of them would like to go into space, and that you could launch 1 a day on average, that keeps you in business for about 27 years. Hopefully in those 27 years, they'll have brought the costs down enough so that /. geeks could go, even once in a lifetime. Then there'd always be newly-minted millionaires and repeat-visit millionaires.
Once proven safe, I'm sure there'd be no shortage of customers for something SO exotic.
Besides the 200 mile club for entertainment, and besides looking out the windows and mingling with the other orbital elite, I would hope that the hotel would have one empty module with padded walls. Someplace to FLY. (OK, drift/bounce in freefall)
Which brings up the next thoughts...
Let a dance troup develop something in that empty module, and televise it.
Let artists be there, look out the windows, etc, and translate their new experiences into canvas, music, sculpture, etc.
Hold a peace conference, with a different perspective on the matter.
Moviemaking, one-up "The Uranus Experiment"
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
According to NASA studies on centrifugation of people, and IIRC, humans can't tell whether they're subjected to centrifugal acceleration or gravity when the radius of rotation exceeds roughly 60 feet.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Noone says you have to be a tourist while up there. If he can get people up there for limited cost (relative of course) why not offer an alternative to NASA etc... himself.
Inflatable labs would be an interesting extension. They would not even have to be manned.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
There's plenty of precedents of the gov't farming tasks that it isn't allowed to do off to private contractors. Usually that sort of blind is used by places like the CIA.
I'm not a mod today, but I am disappointed in you. Burt's craft (arguably Paul's craft) solves many, many problems. Its a first step (see tier) in developing a cheap way to space. I challenge you to get to 100km on $20 million (2004 dollars). I wonder how much other teams have spent & what there chances are of reaching space at all, much less doing it twice, with a 600lb payload, in 2 weeks. Nevermind doing it *first*.
... until reality kicked in.
... plus c'est la mème chose.
First thought was it seemed that with all the heavy industry out in space, Earth could be turned into a garden paradise.
Second thought was that the SUV's would still be around. All the fossil fuels going to fuel industry could now go to cars thereby extending the available resources well into the future. And, humans would still whack down forests for condos and developments in the prettier parts of the world.
Plus ca change
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I can't help but think of a story I read as a child, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.
Anybody familiar with writer Roald Dahl knows that two of his books deal with Charlie Bucket and Willy Wonka. In the second book, he takes Charlie out into space inside the Great Glass Elevator and inside NASA's spanking new Space Hotel for an unauthorized tour. They are forced to evacuate the place when the dangerous Vermicious Knids appear in the elevators of the Space Hotel, then have to rescue the three NASA astronauts on their way there, who have become trapped in the Knids' grip! They are forgiven for entering the hotel when the rescue succeeds.
It was a wonderful story, one that I'm surprised never got made into a movie, especially as the sequel to the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
For once, the mods were right. The X-Prize is not advertising for Burt Rutan's spacecraft. If you knew anything at all about SpaceShipOne or the X-Prize, you would probably never say what you did say. Other than that, I don't see anything wrong in criticising the "slashdot gods", but at least try to do it properly, with facts if possible. Otherwise it's just as bad as those who worship them without ever seeing any flaws at all.
Hotels in Europe still serve "continental breakfasts"...so where exactly is this continent that they speak of? :)
Come with inflatable bed mates :P
-Cnik
Actually- Nope. (Purportedly) The project was started PRIOR to the X-Prize competition...Yes- its certainly icing on the cake, but it wasn't the original reason he started it all...
Sig currently under construction. Mind the gap....
The possessive of "it" is "its", NOT "it's". Fucking retard. Learn English. God, am I getting fucking pissed at idiots like you. Don't they still teach this sort of shit in second grade!?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I realize that they are doing multiple layers here, but I have to wonder about the gas permeability of woven material and/or thin layers of plastic. Does anybody have any data on much gas would be able to escape through such a material in a vacuum?
How many pringle cans would I have to duct tape together to get online up there?
And the big key is this: only about a dozen countries and organizations have done it WITH government backing.
Nope. From the article..
You want a sig? I can get you a sig... Hell, I can get you a sig by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.
Remind you of anyone?
Inflatable technology? Hey kids, it's Dr. Schlock!
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
X-15 flew 199 times, Spaceship One flew once. You have to divide the cost by the flight count.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
There have been lots of jokes about zero-g sex.
But there are lots more things to do in an orbital habitat.
R&D into the manufacturing uses of zero-g might fund one orbital habitat. Can we grow crystals with fewer impurities in zero-g than in g? We've got very good at doing it on earth. It's worth doing the experiments. (Have they been tried on shuttle missions?)
Now let's get imaginative. How much would the first zero-g movie cost to make? Apollo 13 had its zero-g scenes shot in the Vomit Comet. How much more could be done with an entire set in zero-g? "Die Hard in Space", anyone?
Once you have a station in LEO how much would an orbital transfer vehicle cost to run? Would an OTV capable of reaching geostationary earth orbit make for cheaper launching of communications satellites? Would launch be cheaper if components were launched and fitted together in orbit? There might be savings if the initial launch could be made cheaper at the cost of a higher failure rate because the failed components wouldn't be used in the final satellite constructions.
Could an orbital repair station be of use? Many satellites have failed because of a a few critical components failing. Is there a repair market? Hell, if these are light enough and you have an OTV, put a habitat in GEO. Repair and refuel satellites in situ.
Those are just off the top of my head and are probably my personal pipe dreams but I think if some imagination is used you'll find there's lots more to it than sex. Bit like the WWW, really.
- Bob Dowling
Those who do not learn from Dilbert are doomed to repeat it.
Who says anything about living? This is a hotel. Stay 3-5 days for around $300,000, including airfare and meals, recreation.
When your days are up, come home. I seriouly doubt 5-14 days in space will have any significant effect on peoples bone mass.
How would an orbital, inflatable, space hotel traveling at 32,000 MPH be able to accept passengers from a vehicle with no space dock, that goes straight up without gaining the speed necessary to orbit? The only way that would be feasible is if they built a vehicle at least as complex and expensive as a shuttle or soyez type space craft. It takes many, many, many times more fuel to get an object into orbit VS getting it high enough to briefly be in space but not fast enough to be in orbit.
I really would prefer people to call sex "love-making" (especially when you are married) instead of "pornographic activities."
I mean, your terminology leaves much to be desired - would you suggest then that children are just a result of pornography?
Sounds kind of sick, if you ask me. I happen to consider sex a very wonderful - and fun - activity!
will it have a bouncy fun room? inquiring minds want to know!!
I look at Space Ship One as a sufficient advance for certain kinds of space manufacturing; in a cargo configuration it could launch to the top of its arc and meet with the end of a rotating skyhook (the materials science will make rotating skyhooks feasible much sooner than synchronous skyhooks). The skyhook carries it around and into orbit, where cargo is exchanged for product. On the next trip around the spaceplane is dropped at ~65 miles up and finally completes the other half of its trajectory, while the skyhook reclaims the energy and angular momentum that it loaned to the cargo craft.
I have not had a chance to calculate the profit potential of a kilogram of aerogel, but if a Rutan-style spaceplane can carry sub-orbital cargo for $50/kg and a skyhook-supported factory can process it for less than 10 times that, it looks to me like the material for a super-insulating window would be a rather small part of the overall cost. You would not have to worry about transporting fuel because your skyhook is only loaning energy and momentum, and you can use electrodynamic systems to push yourself against Earth's magnetic field without any need for reaction mass (you may need some gas to run plasma contactors but that is minimal).
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
A skyhook with a center-of-mass eastward orbital speed of 16,000 MPH picking up a craft at a eastward speed of 900 MPH and accelerating the end at 3 G would have to extend (r = v^2/a -> r = (15100*.44704)^2/29.4 = 1550 km = 963 miles from the CG. This is a big task, but hardly impossible. I wish I had time to work the required taper and mass but I've got real work to do today. :(
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Hello? It's not a spaceship. It's an airplane. They did not even get close to entering orbit
I'll bite. It reached space. Its a spaceship. It did not orbit. Therefore it is not an orbiter. Dur.
That's right. All your base.
If all you are trying to do is reclaim the energy and angular momentum, it doesn't matter if the product comes down inside the delivery craft or not. You could probably drop a load of aerogel from 100 km without any heat shielding at all and it should be just fine, though I would want to wrap it in plastic to keep dirt off it.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
What's the *hourly* rate?
From the article: Transhab would be inflated with attached air tanks... NASA could put a module the size of Skylab into space with just one launch.
Umm... NASA did put a module the size of Skylab into space with just one launch... namely, Skylab. Back when we had real heavy-lift capability, the Saturn V.
Incidentally, the interior volume of single-launch Skylab was something like three times as large as the International Space Station will have when its many assembly missions are complete.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
If the idea is to build a low-cost launch vehicle, then you must count the cost per space launch. That's the intended and stated goal, so I'm not sure what other metric you would use. This is the metric of the space industry right now: launch cost.
Furthermore Spaceplane One has only made it to space once, and the X-15 made it 199 times (merely "flying" doesn't quite cut it).
And finally, the X-15 program was a program built from scratch, whereas Scaled Composites was a pre-existing company whose resources could be leveraged for research, design, etc. Those resources are not free, and you are forgetting to include the market capitalization of Scaled Composites in the tally. Admittedly they are a private company but their annual revenue is 12 million dollars, so while they might be worth $100 million right now in IPO, all the publicity they're generating could make them worth considerably more.
In short, the Spaceplane One program has cost over a hundred million dollars for one nearly fatal flight. NASA's X-15 Spaceplane is still the market leader... for now.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
New SCO logo?
Is the inflatable escort doll included?
That was the magazine article's author's figure, not Bigelow's. Remember that these "hotels" only make sense if they're in orbit, and that probably means a lot higher than 62 miles if they want to be somewhere stable for long enough to make back their investment. Mir hung out around 195 miles; ISS is at 400km. So 200-mile-high club is probably about right.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's a request from your government to other governments to please treat you nicely because you're their citizen or subject, and in particular it's a request to let you travel through their country. It usually includes a committement to accept you back if the other government wants to kick you out. Many countries have rules about checking passports when you get on international airplanes or boats because the airline/boatline doesn't want to have to take you back if you're refused entry.
So if Free Enterprise Space Stations Inc. wants to be rude to visitors who've paid a very large sum of money for a ride and insist that they have their papers in order before they take the trip, well, they can do that, and government passports might be useful. It's more likely that you'd need a working Visa card than a visa, however - the papers-in-order bit is more likely to apply to government-run (i.e. military-run) space stations.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The article mentions this:
...
The one attraction [Bigelow] doesn't like to talk about is the chance for his guests to get a little "space nookie." Since humans are inherently horny, there is no question that some space tourists would take the trip just so they could join the 62-Mile-High Club. Bigelow acknowledges this likelihood, but worries that salacious visions of space sex will detract attention from the more serious applications of his technology.
I wonder if this's the first time the phrase "space nookie" has been used in print (assuming this site has a dead-tree version)
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
Getting rid of heat is really hard to do in space. Really. The easiest manner is to use, well, water- and get it good and hot and evaporate-cool.
Water is also the most precious material in space.
Which provide the problem: Do you start scooping atmosphere?
Water's heavy: A kilo of water weighs the same as a kilo of anything else ;). Technically once it's there it doesn't weigh much at all. It is somewhat massive, but alot of metals have it beat.
I'd hope they don't end up drinking it, as it would become radioactive over time. Not very, but I still wouldn't want to drink it.
As for it being used, the biggist indicator for radiation shielding is mass. The more mass you have between you and the radiation source, the more radiation will be absorbed before it reaches you. Besides, the extra shielding probably won't be needed until we're either sending a ship to mars or using a higher orbit.
Water would be nice because as long as you keep it a liquid, you could pump it around to beef up shielding, towards the sun, for example. It's also cheap and stable.
I don't read AC A human right
They are the one who set the cost caps, not NASA.
Just look it up on google.
That's like saying i'm going to spend $50 to win a 5 dollar prize.
Shawn
Crap, back to the drawing board.
- Bob Bigelow
Now featuring humans, individualy and hermaticaly sealed for freshness, so come on down to the third rock from the sun and get your human in a balloon today.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Ignoring tidal forces (which will be much smaller than centripetal accelerations and can thus be disregarded for a quickie analysis), the acceleration at any point on a rotating skyhook is equal to ^2r. Each unit of mass of the skyhook increases the weight pulling against the center by an amount proportional to the acceleration, so I got this equation (where T is tension, A is the cross-sectional area, a is acceleration, S is working strength, omega is angular velocity, rho is density and r is radius):
This yields the tension ratio (and thus the area ratio) between any two radii. Note that the log of the tension ratio is proportional to omega^2r^2, meaning it is proportional to the tip speed squared. It is also inversely proportional to the working strength of the skyhook's material.
Spectra(tm) fiber is already up to an ultimate tensile strength of 3.5 GPa at a density of 0.97 (970 kg/m^3). Assuming that tomorrow's nanotube-reinforced Spectra will permit a fiber at this same strength/density ratio for its working strength and fudging the density to 1.0, I get the following for the taper ratio:
ln( A/A0 ) = (4.281e-3)^2*1000*1.55e6^2/7e9 = 6.290, or A/A0 = 540. If the cross-section required to support 5 tons of spacecraft at 3 G acceleration at the outer tip is (150 kN / 7 Gpa) = 0.0000214 m^2 = 21.4 mm^2, the cross-section at the center would be 116 cm^2. This is a square less than 11 cm across.
Mass of the total skyhook depends on the distance to the counterweight, but I'll just guesstimate it as 3 times the mass of the center cross-section extended all the way to the tip. This amounts to 3 * .0116 m^2 * 1.55e6 m * 1 ton/m^3 = 53940 tons. That's one hell of a long way from gigatons.
It's also a lot of mass to put up with rockets. However, nothing says you have to start so big. Mass of the skyhook is proportional to its weight capacity and in roughly inverse proportion to its tip acceleration (which determines the length). If you put up a bootstrap skyhook capable of handling 50 kg payloads and with a tip acceleration of 15 G, it would need a mass of roughly 275 tons; for 20 kg payloads and 30 G, 55 tons. Lofting payloads to such a skyhook would be amazingly cheap; you wouldn't need aircraft, you could use guns. Once you were in a position to send payloads to the skyhook you could send up spools of fiber to make it thicker and expand its carrying capacity.
Last is the issue of reboost. Putting 20 kg of mass into orbit at ~7500 m/sec and raising it by 155 km against 1 G takes 562.5+30.4=592.9 MJ or 164.7 KWH. If you have 5 solar arrays a la Deep Space One which put out 2 KW apiece, you'd need about 16 hours of sunlight to reboost after each payload (ignoring losses). More power capacity means a greater payload rate. If you can keep adding solar cells, you can increase the lift rate proportional to your power. If you can get to 6 payloads/day you'd be lifting 120 kg/day or enough to build another skyhook in less than 1.5 years. From there, the increase is exponential.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
On the visitor's bone mass.... little. On the bone mass of the maids, receptionists, managers, etc.... a big impact.
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-shpoffo
I'll stipulate to that.
What you think about reusable private spacecraft flying 3 people to 100 km and back is also immaterial unless you are able to finance their construction, too. You may note that it looks to be accomplished by not one but at least two ventures this year.
Of course, you could always fly a sub-scale test mission to see how the stuff works. OSC is still selling Pegasus launches for a few million bucks, isn't it?
The Russians don't have any money, they have rockets and launch services for sale. They have even been selling tourist trips to the ISS, or haven't you noticed? I'm sure that you could get them to put 55 tons into orbit if you had money, and this hotelier's fortune appears more than sufficient.
Did anything I said say otherwise? And did you notice that there is one very interested party who has the time and money? I don't see how you could miss it, he was the subject of TFA.
We already have private access to space, purchasable from the Russians and perhaps the Chinese. What we can do is to use this to bootstrap another technology that has the potential to cut the cost of access to something that a hotelier could accept as a cost of doing business.
My login name is word-play on the title of a song. By the time I made this account, all the good ones were taken.
And I think you're much too pessimistic (and sloppy with your grammar). Any such project is going to
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
That is a fascinating tidbit - if you can cite your reference I would appreicate it greatly.
Off-hand, I'd be interested to see what the percentages & demographics are on the 60 ft figure. Are there those who are more sensitive? How sensitive?
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-shpoffo