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!
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.
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/
Only if you are completely unfamiliar with the way the words `stunt' and `publicity' can be arranged into a well known phrase or saying.
Beardie can't even run a worthwhile train company.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Woohoo! *Finally* a use for all those damn Air Miles I've accumulated!
You must think in Russian.
"It could cost us up to $100 million to invest," Branson told reporters. "We've done quite a lot of research; we think there are about 3,000 people out there who would want to do this," Sir Richard told the BBC.
That's quite a bit for a one-off publicity stunt, entirely aside from the 14 Million Pounds already invested.
That's quite a bit for a one-off publicity stunt,
`Could' is the important word here.
entirely aside from the 14 Million Pounds already invested.
Which 14 million?
So they haven't actually committed to 14 million. Indeed the press release doesn't say how much they have comitted to, so we can assume it is not very much -- or MAV would be crowing about it._O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
That is barely enough time for the in flight movie (apollo 13 maybe?) and one trip from the beverage lady.
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.
I like Branson;
...
I have always thought of Branson as a "Nice Guy" yes, he has his finger in a few pies. But it seems to me that when he takes on a loss making public service (british transport ) and makes a good stab at turning it around for the better of the people.... I Just get the impression that his heart is in the right place. I will never forgive the lottery commision in the UK for not awarding it to branson; who promised that all of the money made from ticket sales would go to deserving causes rather than the percentage (whatever that is) that Camelot give away.
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
If so, he plans pretty far in advance:
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
The hell it is. Try Virgin vs GNER for a Scotland to London trip. Virgin is slower, less reliable and the rolling stock is a joke. Last time I was stupid enough to travel on a Beardy train the mysery was only releaved by the entertainment of watching the staff using a huge metal spike to lever the toilet door open to let someone out.
As for pricing restrictions, the train fair is already almost an order of magnitude greater than flying (80 quid Edinburgh to Nottingham return a few weeks ago, anywhere from 2.50 up for a single on EasyJet if I'd been organised enough to book, add in a local train journey from airport to Nottingham), so they are hardly having their prices nailed to the floor.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
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.
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.
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.
..or with the slashdot readership, riding a Virgin is probably about going where no sane woman would consider going at all...
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 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 wonder whether they have a license from the Roddenberry estate...
"the ones to actually create the means to make this possible"
Are you kidding? There's little revolutionary about Rutan's design, apart from the fact that it was privately built. What's so special about polybutadine as a fuel? What's so special about nitrous as an oxidizer? What's so special about a launch-at-altitude? You might get some points for the shuttlecock wings, but that's about it.
How much does Rutan's ship cost to operate? He adimantly refuses to say. They won't even say exactly how much investment has been put in! What makes you so confident that this is some sort of miraculous, megacheap craft (as far as *suborbital* flight goes)? The technology that they're utilizing certainly isn't that special.
If you want to credit the *real* pioneers of spaceflight, you need to look to the USSR and Germany.
"TAMS shouldn't be destroyed. They should just tag us before releasing us into the wild." -- Maeglin
How many of the 500 people who are currently called 'astronauts' actually piloted their rockets, and how many were simply strapped to them?!!
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?
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!
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.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
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.