Slashdot Mirror
Virgin Atlantic Licensing SpaceShipOne
Tigerquoll writes "According to the Australian Broadcasting Commission, British airline magnate Richard Branson has announced a plan for the world's first commercial space flights and has signed a technology licensing deal with Mojave Aerospace Ventures - the US company behind SpaceShipOne. See scaled composites' media release and the Virgin Galactic website"
As we all know, when you ride a Virgin you boldly go where no man has gone before.
"Our press release was covered by Slashdot today! Perfect! Make sure our database guys delete all records received before October 1, because they're poor geeks who just want the brochure for free. Don't waste your phone calls on these freeloaders."
What's your damage, Heather?
I may never get onto the world's first commercial supersonic jet, now that it's been retired, but with an initial price of £115,000 I'll certainly hope that (after another 5 years or so, when the price has come down), I'll get into space. Cool. Really cool if it flies over my house :-))
I'd always regretted not doing the quick flight to NY from London (not that I could afford it!), even with tiny seats. I'm told it was just about possible to pop over the pond, do your xmas shopping in a different continent, and pop back the next day (same day was possible but left little time for shopping...) Let's just hope that the space-flights stimulate some competition, unlike Concorde, because then the next goal would quickly become 'lunar city'...
I think that 'Virgin Galactic' is hopelessly optimistic, though, given that it's sub-orbital. I'm guessing people won't really want the 'galactic' version, and a return ticket might be a bit superfluous...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
How will be the insurance cost calculated ?
I mean, there are stats which help defining the cost of a plane travel insurance but there ain't such stats concerning commercial flights...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
If you look at the BBC article, the Virgin spacecraft design is to be called the VSS Enterprise!
"Apart from building SpaceShipOne for Paul and then watching it fly to space on June 21st this is one of the most exciting days of my life. Our June space flight was flown with several new technologies that address both the cost and safety of manned space flight. These, combined with the lessons learned from our SpaceShipOne research program, will enable us to develop the finest suborbital operational systems possible. I am looking forward to getting started on the development program and the opportunity to work with Virgin on taking Paul Allen's vision to the next stage."
"Some people have got a mental horizon of radius zero and call it their point of view." - David Hilbert
The journey takes three hours, at about £33,000 an hour.
At that rate, I hope they've included some process to permenantly keep your eyelids open to maximise the amount of view you get.
Created on..............: Wed, May 08, 2002
Now there's some foward planning!
" If it is a success, we want to move into orbital flights and then, possibly, even get a hotel up there"
-Sir Richard Branson
From bbc
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
This is the best news I've heard all year!
Since 7 AM, I feel like I'm living a book by Arthur C. Clarke. I've been waiting for this since I was a kid. I've just been repeating the company name over and over in my head:
Virgin Galactic Spacelines.
Wow.
Oh - and it seems they have a website...be sure to check it out!
The licensing deal with M.A.V. could be worth up to £14 million ($21.5 million) over the next fifteen years depending on the number of spaceships built by Virgin.
The development alone of the technology is predictably high:
It is expected that around £60 million ($100 million) will be invested in developing the new generation of spaceships and ground infrastructure required to operate a sub orbital space tourism experience.
The revenue for flights seems about what one would expect:
Over five years Virgin expects to create around 3000 astronauts and the price per seat on each flight, which will include at least three days of pre-flight training, are expected to start at around £115,000 ($190,000).
So, given all of these numbers, doesn't $21M for a license seem low?
-erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
After having spent 30 years of research in order to conquer the complexities of making
train carriages tilt while travelling along a curve at 150 miles/hour, and taking 15 minutes off the travel time, it's only
a small step to having reusable space craft running shuttle flights to and from Mars.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Once everyone who can reasonably afford to, has gone up in space, floated around the cabin a bit, and drunk their vodka-bubbles, what are they going to do for an encore? Take people to Mars? Once the novelty has worn off, people realize there's nowhere to go for your 10 day vacation because everything interesting is 3 generations away... Just a passing fad like radio, television, and spam.
That's cool, but nothing compared to ...
l ow /
... SpaceHotels, Yeah!
'America Space Prize' $50 mil.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0409/27bige
for the first one that comes up with an orbital thingy to visit Bigelows
"According to the Australian Broadcasting Commission," it's actually a corporation and hasnt been a commission for quite a while. Yes it is still government funded, but the C stands for corporation now-a-days.
-- robin.shannon.id.au This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Recombo Plus License.
I think it is pretty inevitable that Virgin will have to go back to Scaled for engineering services. They will make a lot more money on that in the long run
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The virgin galactic (which translates to Virgin Milky...) site gushes about the spiritual experience for rich tourists ("executive jets"..."dine with astronauts" yadda yadda) but the true opportunity for the foreseeable future will be IMHO in high speed intercontinental flight for those for whom it is really important. Let space tourism pave the way (like the rich did with the automobile) but let's not forget the ultimate goal. Then I can finally go to a conference in Australia without haveing to reserve two days for getting there!
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
If you look at the total costs of SpaceShip One until now its not really low...
And I suspect that they are counting on Virgin to come back and order increasingly more and larger spaceships.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Woohoo! *Finally* a use for all those damn Air Miles I've accumulated!
You must think in Russian.
Pay as you Go service?
Or Pay as you Glow if anything went wrong...
Airlines don't have bad enough fuel economy. Let's start a business based on one of the worst fuel efficient means of transportation possible. If we're lucky, we can go bankrupt even before we IPO.
I wouldn't call it newly launched. The Virgin card was launched in either late 2001 or early 2002, IIRC. My company was in discussions with Virgin and ANB to do the card, but in the end they went with one of our competitors.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
... you're actually living in a "You are the hero" book ;) There's nothing stopping anyone from participating in the uppcoming adventure of commercial space travel.
This newly born industry needs talents to bloom. Ask yourself what you can do to help.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
I heard that the ticket would be around $100,000. It is yet too expensive for the normal population.
Catch the Virgin Train, and travel to airport. ...
Stay at the Vigin hotel.
Catch the Virgin Plane, and cross the Atlantic.
All the while, drinking your Vigin cola and listening to Virgin music on the Vigin radio station.
And then fly the Vigin spaceship.
Are there any high-profile industries that Mr. Branson doesn't plan to get involved with?
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
You're probably right. There has, however, been a fairly serious relaunch in progress, since April '04, when Branson's Virgin Group bought out Virgin Money, previously half owned by HHG.
Theres a fairly high profile set of TV commercials in heavy rotation at the moment, too.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Virgin Atlantic Licensing SpaceShipOne
How long before I can download it off of Kazaa?
60 percent of the time, my comments are right everytime.
This is good news, for sure, but so far it's all hype and little reality. I would want to see the marketing numbers that support the idea of such expensive and short-duration flights.
I suppose that until somebody offers truely orbital flights of several hours or more -- then maybe somebody could drop the cost of a house to take a ride.
Not that I'm complaining. If I won the lottery I'd take every ride like this I could buy. But if it looked like a few more years until I could go orbital, I might wait a bit.
That is barely enough time for the in flight movie (apollo 13 maybe?) and one trip from the beverage lady.
It became the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1983! get with the times!
s ti ng_Corporation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Broadca
The US went from suborbital unmanned flight to the Moon in almost exactly 10 years:
Little Joe 1 - August 21, 1959 - test of launch escape system during flight, first flight of the Mercury program.
Apollo 11 - July 20, 1969 - Landing on the Moon.
One of the most incredible and awe-inspiring achievements of the XXth century, and I'm saying this when I'm not even American. If it were started from scratch today, everyone would think it would simply be impossible.
You may say that a lot of resources were sunk into this, for sure. However large private interests have even more money than governments these days.
If I had Bill Gates' fortune this is the thing I would do. Get back to the Moon, establish a small base, restart the Orion program from there, mine the outer planets for He3, go to the stars. Would $40B be enough? I don't know. It's the most responsible thing to do if we want to survive as a species.
If so, he plans pretty far in advance:
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
I hate the thought of spending US$ 200,000 for 3 minutes of weightlessness. I want a space blimp instead. I like it slow and big.
the announcement is step 0. step 1 involves clearing all of the government obstacles. but according to popular /. opinion, that is the one thing that sir branson is obviously quite good at.
if they succeed with step 1, then us geeks can get excited in earnest. step 2 will be development and testing. should be no problem given the monies involved. then of course, in step 3 we'll see many, very rich people fulfilling their lifelong dreams. the rest of us will watch with unbridled envy.
but i fear that step 4 will be sudden bankruptcy, when they quickly exhaust the very small number of adventurers rich enough to afford the still hideously expensive ticket.
"We apologise for the delay to the 11:20 Virgin Suborbital. This is due to... err... the wrong kind of space."
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
Virgins don't go all the way, and to grind to a stop in a vacuum would.. erm.. really suck.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Branson is a master of PR, and I wouldn't be remotely surprised if this venture gets quietly binned, once its provided its much needed channels to allow Branson time to plug his newly launched credit card
He's also a successful entrepreneur to the tune of billions, so I wouldn't write him off that quickly. He must be doing something right.
When he started an airline (Virgin Atlantic) people aired similar doubts. When British Airlines realised he was serious they threw every dirty trick in the book at him... but they got smacked down in the courts when Branson proved they were operating an effective monopoly (a situation close to slashdot readers' hearts).
Despite extensive industrial sabotage, Virgin launched the worlds prototype discount airline, which to date has been massively successful. Virgin Blue, the australian arm of the business, has captured a third of the domestic market from Qantas within a few years. All the while Virgin has dominated another form of air travel with Virgin Balloons. But I'm sure that was a ploy to sell plastic credit too.
Naive spin-master or visionary benefactor? I think Branson's record speaks for itself.
A hypersonic "spacecraft" which blasts into low earth orbit can probably make a landing on a different continent after a pleasurable period in free-fall... somewhat faster than a Boeing jetliner flying in the stratosphere at 600mph.
Virgin tend to show sound commercial sense, I suspect the tagline of pleasure flights to orbit is a cover for development of more efficient long-haul aircraft which travel outside the atmosphere
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Nice choice of name for the space-ship (from the website)
...
VSS Enterprice
(Virgin Space Ship)
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
The site says that after your flight, you'll have a dinner where you'll be presented with your astronaut wings. I can see some resentment from the established astronaut/cosmonaut/taikonaut corps to this.
How much do you want to bet that the requirements for receiving your wings will be raised by 100km or so?
Chip H.
But this isn't like any of those other cases. This is not just a new market, and its not even a market thats going to be viable for a decade or longer. He's quite possibly interested in it, but why the widely reported press release now?
Because he's a smart man, and he recognises a chance to leverage a relatively moderate investment into a massive PR and publicity coup.
So do I.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Branson's money has been made very shrewdly, and almost exclusively by entering mature markets and undercutting them
To enter a market with a lower price doesn't guarantee success, even with a strong brand like Virgin. Hence the failure of Virgin Cola(tm).
I think the winning strategy here is he has deliberately targeted markets dominated by one or two corporate bohemoths who really need a kick in the ass in regards to competition, and shake things up a little. That's what they're doing now with space tourism. Competition is good for the consumer.
Does being strapped into a rocket actually make someone an astronaut?
Taking a flight in an airliner doesnt make one a pilot, you are merely self loading cargo.
If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done?
there's Zero-G, which is offering flights now for just under $3000 per person. Ok, so it's not exactly going to space - but you get real weightlessness for the price!
Energy: time to change the picture.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
The Russian government would be happy to fly you into space, but I'm pretty certain the price would be beyond both our beer budgets for the next few years.
I was really trying to argue that offering a lower price than your competitor isn't a magic beans recipe for success, even for bearded twats.
What I'm pointing out is that Virgin will fly you to space for 10s of 1000s less than has been possible previously. Assuming that Virgin Galactic gets off the ground (groan).
..or with the slashdot readership, riding a Virgin is probably about going where no sane woman would consider going at all...
commercial space flight?
I was wondering how they could know they would necessarily be the world's first commercial spaceflights? Although Rutan's ship has already made the flight and will almost undoubtedly take the X-prize there is another X-prize team who should soon be spaceworthy and have long been talking of turning their exploit into a commercial venture. I'm talking of the Canadian Arrow team who have, at the same time as they were getting their rocket ready for lauch been busy building a private astronaut training center, and they've also been thinking about space diving. There are also other X-prize teams looking for commercialization of space, although I don't know how close those are to launch.
Although Virgin's vehicle will be the first out there, the business itself will undoubtedly take some time to launch. They might actually be beaten to the commercial punch by other teams which have been working on the business plan of putting people in space for a profit for a while now.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
Does anyone else remember Pan Am taking advanced reservations on the "Space Clipper" as part of their 'product placement' in Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's 2001 ? Someplace admidst the wreckage of my youth I have a certificate that Pan Am mailed to me certifying that I had a reservation when the "Space Clipper" flies. I wish I could find it. At least I have my Apollo 11 patch left over from a NASA visit in '70. If Virgin can actually make it happen, I say go for it ! Space travel has gotten too Governmental and has lost a ton of the adventure / romance that attracted me as a kid. If Branson can make it work, wahoo ! I just hope he registers through some country that doesn't allow lawyers in, otherwise the bastards will kill the love.
I used to work for Virgin, my team was responsible for Virgin's domain names. We used to buy hundreds of domain names related to the name "virgin", so I would not get to excited by the fact that this domain goes back 2 years.
I thought the first space hotel would be a Hilton (2001). I wonder if Paris Hilton will plan on sponsoring one as well (pink, of course).
I think Sir Richard could have done a good job of restoring Concorde to its former glory. SpaceShipOne is just his latest go-fast toy.
After all Branson speding a billion to play with his toys (SpaceShipOne, Concorde) is no different than any hobby we may have. Of course it is a billion, but overall it's a small percentage of his assets.
I'm guessing they don't quietly bin something they've already spent millions on...
Betting on cultures? You indeed are mad. Certainly you don't speak poorly of the culture that used "slow" super computers, "poorly" educated engineers and drove their "unreliable" cars work and were the ones to actually create the means to make this possible.. asp?ID=2004037
for your review. That pesky *censored* culture full of fat people seem to pull off remarkable things. Ohhh... bother.
No, I know you wouldn't. Since I believe this is a misconception on your part I present the following link http://www.jdpower.com/news/releases/pressrelease
valder.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I used to work for the company providing support to Virgin Trains and our main source of humour on the long night shifts was people phoning up to tell us that "RAVERS had gone down" and we needed to do something to "bring the RAVERS up again." Our suggestions of "more ecstasy" didn't always go down well.
This was almost as amusing as the system they have in Virgin music stores called "ELVIS" and we would be similarly amused to hear that "ELVIS had gone down".
But not Europa. We'll attempt no landings there
But then how will we get the mile-long diamonds?
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
I think it will be a bit of status symbol, but I can forsee, just on SIS alone, a considerable number of flights per affording person. It will probably take several flights to acheive this status, and I forsee a line of couples heading to the bathrooms or other private areas as soon as they can.
But that is just me, I think.
emt 377 emt 4
Will it be too expensize ( what is "expensize", anyway ) for us? Or will the tickets be the same price?
( relax, I'm just kidding ).
emt 377 emt 4
I wonder whether they have a license from the Roddenberry estate...
ahh.. that explains why the bandwidth just dropped a wad...
...
Nick
First, your number "10s of 1000s" less is wrong. Tito - the very first (and probably most expensive) payed 20 mil. They're looking to charge over 200k here. So, at most, it's "100" times less. Furthermore, this is *suborbital*. If you wanted suborbital flight, there's a dozen countries that could hook you up for this cheap.
"TAMS shouldn't be destroyed. They should just tag us before releasing us into the wild." -- Maeglin
Well, thats the headline figure. Something tells me the contract is long term, and more subtle than "here's a big pile of cash", giving all concerned plenty of wiggle room...
Besides "millions" is not all that much to the Virgin Group. Branson probably spent than on his various aborted balloon trips.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
And somewhere on the Virgin Group website, he flat out states that he intends to do exactly this with the "Virgin Galactic" brand. It's been up there for a few years. I think he originally intended to use it to broker the Russian spaceflights, but this is better...
--- Posted by a random tech support monkey from Villanova University
In the period between 1959 and 1969 - money was no object. At that point, we were near the peak of the Cold War, and very few people in the American public minded spending exorbitant amounts of money on putting a person on the moon, because it meant beating the Russians.
These days, there is no Enemy that we must race to space to beat, thus there isn't an incentive to spend exorbitant amounts of money. The recent efforts (X-Prize, etc.) have mainly been in the arena of taking spaceflight and bringing the cost down.
IMO, we won't be seeing cheap Moon shots in only 10 years. But nonetheless, SpaceShipOne is an important first step to space.
Space tourism is likely not going to pay the bills, but SpaceShipOne + White Knight is not far in configuration from what would be needed as a first (actually in this case first (WK) AND second (SSO) ) stage booster for a small rocket designed to insert small payloads into low-earth orbit.
Then after we're slinging picosatellites into orbit dirt-cheap, the next step will be larger satellites. Then eventually, people. Then we'll leave low-earth.
It's going to take a LOT longer than ten years for the Moon to become cheap to fly to. (IMO it won't happen until a compact fusion reactor exists, but the way fusion is being funded, we won't be seeing one of those for many, many decades.) But suborbital flight is an important first step.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
It's not a question of what's "easier" or what's "superior" but the fact it's actually occuring. If this were because of how easy it was then there are any number of people that would have rocket ships in their backyards.
The greatest thing we are not factoring into the equation isn't the sciences but the risk taking and entrepreneurial spirit that goes into an endeavor as we see here. Rutan and Branson are showing what it is to be a pioneer not cultural superiority or mathmatical acheivements -- however, both are a factor.
Either way, it's capitalism all the way.
valder.
I am a true-blue aviation fanatic, and hated to see the end of the Concorde as much as anyone, but after the deadly fuel tank rupture, fire and crash in Paris, the remaining aircraft were all carefully examined and there were numerous impending safety problems popping up all over these birds. Stuff you'll never read about in the laypersons' news media... stuff that's generally kept privy to only a close-knit community of folks who operate and maintain fast jets. The years of operational stress were taking a toll on the Concordes' airframes, and also more and more fundamental design issues were coming to light about the aircraft. The kind of stuff that's only learnable by the gathered experience of operating, maintaining and flying such aircraft for 3 decades can provide, and that only a substantial --and unfeasible-- complete re-design of major systems could even have begun to remedy. Not to mention the extreme operating cost and unprofitability of these birds helped to do them in too, that's the story given by the media, because it's most easily understood and accepted by the general public, but there were some dark mechanical secret problems too. It's best that these birds are retired from service and shall live on as grounded museum pieces now. One more tragedy would have absolutely ruined the romatic history of these aircraft. Now, with only one deadly accident in its history, the Concorde can still retire with much of its dignity still intact. Its better that way.
If you wanted suborbital flight, there's a dozen countries that could hook you up for this cheap.
Oh yeah, which ones?
I can count the number of countries that have demonstrated, cheap suborbital capability today on my nose. It's one, the USA, and it only has this capability courtesy of Burt Rutan and his financial backer Paul Allen. The US otherwise currently has no manned launch capability at all, suborbital or otherwise. The X-15 would have been perfect for cheap suborbital flights, but I don't know if it ever could have been as cheap as SSO, and it's also been dead and gone for a long, long time. The only two countries that can currently put a person anywhere into space are Russia and China, and neither one has a suborbital system. Of course they can send you on a suborbital flight, but it'll be using orbital hardware, and so it won't be much cheaper.
Maybe I'm totally missing something, but I don't believe your statement is correct.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Pardon if the memory cells are a little dusty from Hurricane Ivan, but...
Back when the SF Novel "Pegasus In Flight" (by Anne McCaffrey) came out, in the early part of the book was mentioned a businessman/entrepreneur who privately financed his own space program along with other businessmen. This person had his own airline already, and was looking for new horizons.
Now, I'm fairly certain that this person (who I can't remember the name of) is based on Richard Branson. And equally interesting was the launch system is similar to the White Knight/SpaceShip One vehicle being used. Coincidence? Maybe. But I wouldn't put it past Mr. Branson that he hasn't read "Pegasus In Flight" and decided to try and make it real. Wouldn't be the first time.
There have been commercial space flights for... gee I don't want to waste the time to go figure out what would count as the first one, but it sure wasn't in this millenium, no matter how you count it. One could pretty easily argue for the 60's.
Of course, one wouldn't expect press releases to worry too much about accuracy.
PS. Perhaps they were referring to manned space flights. Now that would be quite different thing. Those of us that work in technical matters sometimes worry about actually saying what we mean.
He'll probably do both. Soyuz can get you into orbit but it will cost a lot. Spaceship One only gets you into space for a few minutes, but is orders of magnitude cheaper.
I heard it was gonna be golden pallace, but apparently they had an exclusive with another spaceship comppaney.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Did anyone consider the concequences going into space with a discount airline?
Yeah, this'll be great, get cramped in a seat with no legspace, being offered drinks for $4000 a piece and barfbags with cheap looking ads on them.
Or maybe im thinking of Ryanair...
From the website: You could possibly have the opportunity to ride in fast jets, to experience negative gravity in our executive jet and then watch as one of the other launches leaves earth for the near reaches of space; possibly you may even ride in the mother ship.
Whatcha gonna do, George?! Put a glide in your stride, a dip in your hip, and come on down to the mothership!
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
...However to keep the prices down there will be no peanuts, no movies, no pressurized cabins, and the heat shields will be made out of aluminium foil. On the plus side you can get to Rigel IV for only four pounds Sterling.
Actually Virgin is not a discount airline, it's a traditional carrier with a simple network, and so greater control over its costs. As another poster has noted, Branson's competition is the entrenched large airlines such as BA and AA who had it their own way for too long.
Having said that, he doesn't seem to want to compete *too* hard - I just had a look at a flight LHR(28th)->JFK, overnight stay, return next day, cheapest seats: BA £860, Virgin £855 (cf American at £947).
The world has changed and we all have become metal men.
ABC is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, not the "Australian Broadcasting Commission".
No. I'm pretty sure this is just another stunt of Richard's just to sell more copies of Tubular Bells
Woohoo! *Finally* a use for all those damn Air Miles I've accumulated!
Nope. Sorry to break it to you pal but there's no air in space. To all of people who back in 70s were complaining that 'Air Mile' was a stupid name and 'Fly Mile' should be used instead: WHO LAUGHS NOW?!