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Space Tourism is Off and Running
ackthpt writes "The ink wasn't even dry on the Ansari X Prize check, after Brian Binnie piloted SpaceShipOne into space, when deals were already being made. Announced last week, Richard Branson of Virgin Group would be licensing the technology, and according to p2pnet is already embarking on plans to build a fleet of 5 passenger carrying craft. Space tourism? Preposterous! It'll take years, decades. Isn't that the consensus? According to The Australian Cadbury/Schweppes may be giving away a the prize of a space flight under the cap of your next bottle of 7 Up: 'Within hours, one of SpaceShipOne's sponsors and the "official beverage" of the AnsariX Prize, the soft drink 7Up, announced it would be offering the first free ticket into space.' Further, 'another company, Space Adventures, has already collected $US10,000 deposits from about 100 customers for its planned flights, which will cost less than $US100,000.' Last one into space is a rotten egg!"
Is off and running. Perhaps in a few years.
:D
My wife even said I could.
Not only can you go into space, your teeth can rot pleasantly in the process.
I hate giveaways. I never win.
-E
hrrm.
I figure I can save up $100,000 by only eating out once a week or so..... for the next 400 years.
It sounds neat and all, but I think I'll wait until it costs around $10,000 total. Hopefully I won't be too old by then.
Now there won't be any place where I can go to avoid the tourists.
We're not talking extended orbital flight, are we? Just a quick peek above the atmosphere, then straight back down, right?
While that might be fun, I don't consider it especially compelling -- certainly not to the tune of $100K.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Last one into space is a rotten egg!
:-)
No thanks. I think I'll wait until there is an actual destination before going into space. Let me know when you find the dimensional rift that leads to Utopia and I'll sign up then. I would love to see Utopia! Oh my. I bet it's got lots of systems in it that can play Doom 3 in Ultra mode.
I'm now positive that Lance Bass is finally going to go to space. Mentally the guy is already there! He was going to pay $20mil to go to space, and now all the dregs of society can do it for merely $100k. Oh poor Lance! Well at least he can go now.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
the "official beverage" of the AnsariX Prize, the soft drink 7Up
Kind of gives new meaning to the 7up slogan, "Show us your can"
It time to start saving my pennies so I can buy a trip to space. The big question to ask....
What are you willing to give up in order to save the money for a flight to space?
For me, I'm considering moving into a shittier apartment. Oh, and I plan to start drinking more 7-Up.
First Post!
Way to go SpaceShipOne!
I don't know if this will come to pass in the next ten years, but I sure hope so. Two hundred thousand is a bit steep for me (for 5 mins of zero-g), but I so hope the price drops.
I could see myself defering retirement for a year or two to buy a week in space. I bet there are a ot of people like me.
Even if one out of ten thousand people in the richer countries are willing to shell out for something like this, there is a huge industry waiting.
I am so excited... yet so skeptical. It is a weird feeling.
congratulations, dave, you won a trip into space. but i have been hacked by pepsi and you must now die. i'm sorry dave.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
... I really don't feel the need to risk life to go into space on a rocket designed to win a race into outer space....I'll wait until it's commercialized, engineered and proven before I even consider it.
I wonder how they're planning on consoling the person who wins, if it turns out that he/she won't be able to survive the trip? Sounds like a legal nightmare any way you look at it.
Wonder how much more debris crashes, malfunctions and whatnot will cause when there's a monetary incentive to keep it cheap. Sure, in the long run it's way worse for everyone but that never stopped the forces of a free market before, eh.. ;-)
This will be the "look at me" popular thing for awhile, like ballooning was.
Something will replace rocket-powered flight, and that will lead the way into space flight.
16-year olds are going to get a "spacing permit", along with Dad's old clunker, only capable of going to the moon and back.
Hey...just a thought.
Making money? I hate it already!
Oh, in that case nevermind what I said before
--
Free gmail invites
...waaayyyyyyyyy up.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Doesn't SpaceShipOne burn rubber and nitrous oxide?
What are the environmental side-effect of that!
Just so some rich guys can have a thrill.
At the very least there should be an enivronental surtax on it (say one million bucks). Or how about
force all frivilous astro-tourists to clean up some toxic waste on Earth.
The excitement will last right up until one of these flights explodes, killing everyone aboard. After the lawsuits clear up, methinks you'll see the market for "space tourism" dry up for a while.
I wonder if it'll be that easy. It took the Space Ship One team $20 Mil (I think). That is just for a prototype. How much more will it cost to develope something with the safety margins that are required for this sort of thing?
You only spend $5 a week going out to eat? And that assumes no interest accrual. Methinks that a lot of people will be willing to pony up 100K.
Now, I am with you... 10K for a day or so in space would be where I would buy. But $100,000 is chump change to many corporations, and many individuals.
It's called "Frist Psot", you idiot. And you didn't get it either way.
Now, the X Prize will evolve into a regular competition called the X Prize Cup, says the Associated Press, going on:
"In May, organizers selected New Mexico to permanently host the X Prize Cup."
Cool. A Blue Riband for space. Based on distance rather than speed, I suppose. Someone should offer a prize for whomever gets close enough to the moon to photograph the Sea of Tranquility, and shut our conspiracy-laden chums up once and for all.
So does the p2p in p2pnet now stand for planet to planet, then?
Space Tourism still needs a space hotel, though, to be worthwhile.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Make Seven...
Up Yours!
One: Learn to spell correctly in the subject line.
Two: You are such a twit.
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Mello Yellow will be offering a school bus ride across the US as its prize.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
I say we all take up a collection to buy ol' Darl McBride a one-way ticket! Who's with me?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I always wanted to get the chance to go into space. But after the Challenger disaster and the ensuing slowdown in spaceflight and exploration--to say nothing of the strict requirements for NASA astronauts even before that--I figured I wouldn't likely get the chance. Space seemed the domain only of scientists and researchers with government contracts.
But I never really considered commercial spaceflight as being something viable, something that could grow and prosper even without the imprimatur of a major government. Not until now.
I wonder how many other young astronaut dreamers might now get their chance...if only for just one flight?
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
While it's much less of an issue now since there is so much of a demand for rides I wonder how cheap the flights can actually get. There are a lot of expenses involved... Pilot time, fuel for both ships, etc. I can't help but wonder if it will be decades before an average guy like me can afford it.
Chika Chik-ah... do-e ow ow.
Just a little more juice and some steering and this thing could be orbiting the earth for a bit of time...yeah it would get cramped after an hour or two of orbiting but hell...it could damn near dock with the international space station and switch people out once every two weeks...just shoot them up there when they are wearing a freaking space suit and instead of two people in the back pack equipment...and send them back with all the trash :-) (and yes i know there would have to be some serious modifications...but im sure they could add a gps some auto pilot and have the shuttle thing open while in spae...or something...they are veeeeery smart)
:-)
This is very beautiful. This is a first of something to ever occur and the gates will open. Notice how much the price has already dropped? From $200,000 already to $100,000.
I Love capitalism!!!
Mad, adj : Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence. Ambrose Bierce - The Deveil's Dictionsary
I guess that it's a nice idea, but aside from novelty flights is there any practical application to all of this in the next ten years?
Also given all the junk that government sponsored space flight puts off, how are we to regulate these novelty flights in regards to jettisoning various bits of detrius? Or am I just being paranoid?
I still want my flying car!
-------
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Give me a call when the price of a ticket into space is about the same as a trip across the ocean in the Concorde. By then your average 'rich guy' and even some of the people who really really want to go could actually save enough money to go once in their lifetime.
Steal This Sig
Make 7Up Yours.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
For those of you rolling your eyes at the $100,000 cost, the thing is about technology is that it is a rolling snowball; the effect gets bigger and bigger.
Just last week, spaceflight was only for NASA, Russian Astronauts, and Dennis Tito. Today, it is for rich multimillionaires with $100,000 to blow. A few years from now, it will be for rich millionaires with $10,000 to blow. Soon enough, we might have the 'M' prize for first privately owned craft to go to the moon. And this will probably be way after the Space Shuttle program got replaced by Southwest Spacelines.
Sound familiar? Samething happened with computers. First, the CEO of IBM said that only about eight would be necessary for all of humanity. Then came the mainframes, then came the minicomputers, and then came the personal computers. Now my PDA has more processing power than my computer had only eight years ago.
Its an inevitable process, and I look forward to observing it.
Given the various problems during at least two of the last SpaceShipOne flights, I don't think tourists should fly on that thing yet.
Hopefully they'll spend some of that $10M price money for further development and getting rid of the little glitches they've had.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
... really! Even if I can afford it, Im scared that if I get on one of those, I might, you know, DIE or something.
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
Snort. The correct response is "you fail it."
You, likewise, fail it!
...he's not a multi-millionaire?
If cheap space flight is a possibility, then cheap intercontinental ballistic missiles should be a breeze. And with cheap radioactive materials available, we can all feel secure about the future.
Cue the music.
"Got to admit it's getting better; it's getting better all the time."
(*I'm becoming a luddite*)
...to join the 65 Mile High Club?
Q. Why is 7 UP the official sponsor of SpaceShipOne?
:-}
A. Because they couldn't get Pepsi.
Boom! Tish!
Ooop. Wrong space vehicle for that old joke.
Here: http://science.nasa.gov/temp/StationLoc.html They are not that far from a docking event... SP --- Wants the 50 Million Prize
..inter-continental transportation.
Compare number of people who would pay for a ride on SpaceShipOne vs. number of people who would pay for something more practical - say getting you and two bags to Hawaii in 1.5 hours.
Imagine a SSO like design big enough for 20 people and second stage and launched at 45 degrees instead of vertical. Any rocket scientists in here to calculate what a range of something like that might be?
Or maybe this is just a race to make a LOT of money w/ no regard to safety?
As long as I can stop and have a quick Horizon Pop before I take the reentry plunge....SIGN ME UP!
That should be the next big goal. Open the first Bar in space. Perhaps one could get a bit of Duty free shopping done. Hmmm...and about income tax...well, seeing as you are literally out of this rold...tax? What tax?
"Work is the curse of the drinking class" Oscar Wilde
Thiw will be just like that episode of the Simpsons where all the second rate stars are put on a spaceship and sent into the sun.
Only this time we'll charge them all $100,000.
Muahahahaha!
Read any good sonnets lately?
I figure the thing that will really get the space tourism biz going will be the first zero-g space brothel, where anything goes I assume since earth-based laws don't apply?
Yeah like I could claim that on my taxes. Maybe if they launched from Amsterdam and I brought some clients? Not sure what the legalities are of that sort of thing... hehe!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I like the name Virgin is choosing for their fleet:
"Virgin Galactic"... How cool is that?
Linky: virgingalactic.com
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
.. I would DEFINITELY do it. I mean, when I was in Vegas, I've seen people waste that and more in a single night at the roulette table. And not really give a shit afterwards. If I was in that position financially, I would definitely spend that on space tourism.
Until the first craft explodes. I mean this quite seriously. I think people will be enamored with the idea of commercial space flight initially, but if the first accident comes early on, its reputation could be damaged for a long time. On the other hand (you have other fingers), if it becomes a pretty accepted thing before the first accident happens, then no big deal, it will be an accident and the industry will recover.
Commercial space flight is important for space flight in general. As soon as it becomes something that people want to do, private industry will pour money into developing better travel methods, and will spend that money better than the government. With a little luck, NASA's research budget won't have to as big, because innovations from private industry will get some of the work done for them.
In the not too distant future we'll look back at /. and blogs and think how things have changed in only a few years. It'll be like reading computing magazines of the 80's and laughing about a 8mb hdd for $2400 but with space travel.
then we could be traveling via these around the globe instead of up and down.
my plan to jettison the yuppies of earth into space is finally comming together
maybe she said should.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Unfortunately, I can't figure if the X-Prize is on the path to orbit, or merely a distraction. The rubber/LOX hybrid most likely doesn't scale up well enough for an orbital vehicle. I don't know enough about Armadillo's use of H2O2, whether it's used as oxidizer or monopropellent, but I doubt it scales to orbital capablity, either. Nor do I know enough about any of the other efforts.
IMHO, the only part of the sub-orbital effort that's reusable for getting into orbit will be the vehicle handling experience, aloft and especially on the ground. That's nothing to sneeze at, because from every report I've heard, it's the ground costs that make the Shuttle cost so much.
I kind of expect the orbital competition to turn into X-Prize types building the crew vehicle and possibly upper stage, with a more conventional, though likely cost-reduced lower stage.
Even with that, X-Prize contenders aren't fit for a true orbital re-entry, either. Mach 17 is a whole different ball of wax than simply falling from apogee. But I also expect them to be more nimble about using new materials and other fail-safe techniques, like SS1 does now.
Call me a nitpick but without reaching escape velocity it is hardly space travel. There may be fun (and profit) but it is not going to be a step toward an affordable real space travel.
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
Last one into space is a rotten egg!
And the first one into space is an egg whose shell has cracked open due to lack of air pressure, whose yolk then boiled as all the water evaporated into vaccum, and who was then incinerated upon re-entry.
Call me a cynic, but I'd wait a little while to be going into space, even if you can afford it.
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
whether one can book a private party, and have at least 15 minutes in flight privacy from ground control.
Plus, you know their ads will eventually feature bondage. :)
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)
The whole focus of the SpaceShip One effort now seems to be like it was to auger only space tourism and give the rich men (and kids) something to brag about and make more money with. What about its scientific value/benefits and existing as a complement to the govt's space program aka NASA? I mean, crusing at 360,000 feet is cool but surely this effort meant more than just that?
"is there any practical application to all of this in the next ten years?"
Next... Low Earth Orbit, then I suppose Lunar orbit.
Deleted
gravity really pull you down.
I read today on CNN that the X-Prize has all of a sudden evolved into an annual "grand prix" event with the next competition in the '05-'06 timeframe. There will be cash prizes for accomplishing various tasks including making the fastest trip,carrying the most passengers, etc.
Being an aerospace propulsion research and design engineer myself, I was wondering if there were in any start-up projects envisioned to compete that could use some volunteer help, as I would see this as a neat sort of hobby to pass away my free time. Anyone here involved in an X-Prize project, or know of any that I might be able to seek out?
Thanks,
RcktMan77
Space tourism will be big until you get a few shots of women pukin in space! (Or big fat guys with bushy beards!) HHMmmmm, puke in an enclosed space... You couldn't pay people to experience the thrill of that. This craze will taper off until it becomes economical to hit a destination like the moon or mars. Weightlessness blows. Every space tourism company going now will be guaranteed to lose money.
Well, what do you know. NASA has already done this research! The bubbles all stay distributed throughout the drink, BUT an even bigger problem is that the bubbles go all the way through the astronaut's entire digestive system, because they don't "float" to the top of their stomach like they do when there is gravity!
Boy, I hope not....
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
That would be my price for a space trip.
Is that the same Cadbury that makes Easter candy? I can hear it now...
"I've got a golden tiiiickeeet!"
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
$100,000 isn't that much compared to most prizes they have. I'm sure plenty of people here would jump through whatever hoops they setup for a chance to get into space.
you mean the birthcontrol implant eh?
Probably never, since a double barrel (or any shotgun for that matter) is not very effective against anything larger than a duck much past 50 yards. Try educating yourself before any more anti-legal-gun-owning diahreah spews out of your mouth.
SpaceShipOne is for quickie suborbital jaunts only. Rutan is still far, far away from reaching orbit. Your $100K or whatever would buy you just 3.5 minutes of weightlessness at about $475/second. If you're willing to give up the view (SpaceShipOne's windows aren't that great anyway), you can experience weightlessness a lot more cheaply on an airplane ($3K for several 20-second periods) or for 6.5 seconds on the "Superman: The Escape" ride at Six Flags. A full-price Six Flags ticket is $47, so that's only $7.20/second even if you only ride once!
How long until companies start putting earth-visible billboards on the moon? I can see it now..."The old man in the moon uses Viagra! And you wondered what made the moon rise."
$10,000 isn't much more than what it cost to fly the Concorde in it's last days (around $9,000).
But God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us - (Romans 5:8)
Burt Rutan is our Zephram Cochran. no, he didn't make it to warp 1 or catch the attention of the Vulcans. he didn't even pilot the ship. but the opportunity for significant change was certainly made, and that is what makes history.
SpaceShipOne of course wasn't the first spacecraft, but it's the first technology that's accessible to such a large number of people. being the first is not as significant as bringing change. Columbus wasn't the first to visit America, but he's the one that started the change. this is what makes history.
How's the closet?
A blog about stuff.
"In 10 years, everyone will know that if they want to, they can go to orbit in their life," SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan told NBC's "Today" show on Tuesday. "They will know that instead of just hope or dream."
So he said "orbit." And being who he is he knows the difference between orbit and what SS1 currently does.. is this a forecast of a new craft in the works that actually achieves orbit??!:)
---------
No matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.
Tourism may be the main result of the Ansari X prize. However, some of the contestants, have been designing systems with clear orbital capabilities(i.e. John Carmacks's team). Once things go orbital, a lot of commercial options open up beyond tourism. Satellites get cheap. We can start to look seriously at material science applications.
Current SSO Boost is 85nm vertical; thus, fired at 45' you get about 60nm out; about 50nm out on the way back down to about 80K feet... then you start to glide (this assumes no friction to slow you so nothing to glide on above 80K). While SSO covered 35nm from launch from White Knight, you can probably get a lot more (call it 75 on this envelope), but you're WAY, WAY short of making it to Hawaii. Compared to a glider, SSO will drop like a rock.
I imagine the total coverage by SSO could be about 200nm + flight by White Knight, which is perhaps another 200nm. That's only about 2500 miles short if launched from Los Angeles.
Technology has an obvious path you're missing the middle step before common man.
1. Military
2. PORN
3. Common Man
The airline industry was lucky in that they worked out all the major glitches well before the advent of mass visual media. Will the space tourism industry manage to avoid killing lots of people while working out all the kinks? Who knows.
STFU about slashdot bias.
I think what would be cool is if the White Knight, and Space Ship One were combined into a super-ship that would use jet engines to climb to 50,000 feet, and then use rockets for the rest of the way up.
Would that be more efficient? Jet engines are probably a lot more efficient than rocket engines because you make heavy use of the atmosphere. Would there be any problems with this? Would enough weight be lifted by the jet engines to lift the rocket + rocket fuel + cargo? Would getting up to 50,000 feet as a start be worth it when it's only 1/5 of the way into "space"?
The enthusiasm shown by the world over this sudden reality that a large number of people may be able to participate in space flight just shows that manned space flight is very important.
We may be able to do good science, even better science, with robotic missions. But humans want to explore and participate, in person. Doing manned spaceflights is importnat so that we can learn how to fly more and better manned space flights.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Last one into space is a rotten egg!"
Does that mean that those who stay on the ground will have to dream of electric sheep?
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
"Cadbury/Schweppes may be giving away a the prize of a space flight under the cap of your next bottle of 7 Up"
Doesn't this sound like Willie Wonka? (Or at least along the lines of The Family Guy when Peter gets the silver scroll in his beer to visit the Partucket Patriot brewery..)
I just want to go into space to see the Oompa-Loompas!
And, the first person to say, "I think I can see my house from here" gets tossed out the airlock.
The technology behind what put SpaceShipOne up has the potential to reduce the cost of lofting cargo to orbit from the $2,000 per lb for the Space Shuttle to $50-75/lb. Adding on life support and a decent profit, that's $50,000 per ticket, not just for a quickie to 100+km, but to real low-orbit. Now, maybe you can't afford that much for a vacation at the future Motel-6 up there, but it's low enough, if you're skillful enough, for a company to pay your way if you want to work in orbit. The reduced cost also makes it more feasible to work on fun projects like Solar Powersats, or even a Beanstalk, which would drop the cost to orbit another order of magnitude or so.
This preacher was preaching about "Get on the Bus to Heaven" at the end of his sermon he asked the congregation "Who ever is ready to go, stand up." The whole congrgation except for a middle aged man did stand up. The preacher asked the man, "aren't you ready to go?" He replied, "I would like to go to heaven someday, but not right now!"
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Cost for Dennis Tito to go into space - $20 million
Cost for first space tourists aboard SpaceShip One - $100000
How much longer until I can get into space for (looks in wallet).. 45 bucks?
I am the maverick of Slashdot
The raw cost of putting someone up there has got to be going down fast now that the technology's been established. Yet I don't see the proposed ticket price going down in pace with the lowering cost any time in the near future.
Think of space tourism as an ingenious way to squeeze funding for development of space technologies (and whatever else) out of idle thrill-seekers. If these same rich thrill-seekers were to buy luxury cars and rent "companions" with that same money, they wouldn't be helping out new technology half so much, and still spending the money on things they may not use very much (in the case of the cars) or will only enjoy for the moment (the rented companions). The R&D on cars and whores is minimal, given that these are both very old fields.
A bit trollish (and tongue in cheek), but I'll bite.
Although I'd be the first to say that when there's a "monetary incentive to keep it cheap" (in the not high quality sense), that it has a good chance at being statistically more dangerous, that in itself doesn't mean it's way worse for everyone. Ideally there's some minimum quality threshold to meet so that you can rationally explain the risk to a common person so that they are taking an educated risk, but after that, there's always an affordability vs safety tradeoff that society needs to make.
There are numererous example, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, cars, airplanes, food, TV sets, computers, etc... If we took away any monetary axis from the development of these products, my guess is that they might be safer (and that is debatable), and in some higher quality (although the quality would probably tend towards average), but mostly probably the price would be out of the affordability range of many people.
As a silly example, imagine a world where you could get this really nutritious tomato that had 0% defects, no possibility of e-coli/salmanella, no pesticides, not bioengineered at $10/each and that was the only tomato available. By introducing a monetary axis into the tradeoff and a free market, it's quite likely that there will be tomatos avaialble at various price points and various quality levels. Presumably with enough information (and information is a key point), the consumers can make an informed decision (assuming there's a minimum standard that's within the understanding of the common person) and everyone can get what they feel is a good tradeoff. Maybe I'd wash the 20 cent tomato to got off most of the pesticide residue and dismiss the bio-engineer hazard reports, and realize it's not as nutritious as the "ideal" tomato, but it makes a good spagetti sauce and I'd rather spend my money on pharmaceuticals for my chronic pain condition. Although you might argue that I shouldn't have to make that choice, would I want the government to make that choice for me? No.
On the debris crashes, malfunctions and whatnot" issue, I'm not sure that there's a good case to be made that a space shuttle is safer than spaceshipone (the jury is still out since the sample size is too small), but we can certainly say the space shuttle wasn't stellar in this area
Of course the problem with many allegedly free markets is the lack of information and understanding by the consumer. However, I don't think that there is a lack of information in this case. I'm sure everyone knows how dangerous it is and the possibilities of death and destruction, but some people don't want to spend $20mil on a NASA/RKA approved one-size fits all space vehicle.
This is a bit of a double edged sword here.... First off, I think we'll have to start a pool on who will be the first to put a McD's or Tacobell in space. With the development of cheap, inflatable "space stations" already being talked about, it will only be a matter of time before Virgin is approached by someone to include a "rest stop" at the top of the route. Granted, this will come when the tourist ships start entering a higher orbit, and I don't think anyone will pay $200 for a whopper, so we'll most likely see a 5 star type establishment. But it doesn't matter. Consumerism will be the first step into space once regular trips are being made. Absurd you say? Do a little research on how luxurious and decadent the first Zeplins were. So we'll see that, followed by gift shops, and not much longer after that.... BILLBOARDS. Soon, the stars will be a memory. This is a bit on the extreme side, but I'd put money on some form of the above being a reality within the next decade or two. After reading this by fireboy1919: "It's a excellent opportunity to provide a considerable drain on the earth's resources for one's own benefit over a very brief period of time while at the same time producing absolutely nothing to benefit society." It brings up a good point... This will be the play toy of the rich for a while. But it's a nessesary evil. They'll pump money into the system, supporting developments and creating an industry. Once it becomes less of a new thing and more affordable we will look back upon this as the Airlines look back on their predecesors. Awe inspiring and unattainable at first... now a common thing in life. The events we are watching today will be the stepping stones to colonization, space mining, energy harvesting. Now all we have to do it get the damn Space Elevator built. http://www.liftport.com/ (liftport.com)
...and she used it years ago to veto skydiving! Mwha ha ha ha haaaaa! I'm allowed to fly in space! Yipee!
I can hear her now: "We agreed on one expreme sport veto, but I still have an extreme travel veto that hasn't been used. And oh yea, I have an endless supply of sex vetos. Choose wisely."
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
1) 5 min; 2) everybody can see you; but, nobody will complain
^(oo)^pig~
I want to be the first person to get high in outerspace.. that's my dream. I'd be happy to drink 7up to cure my cotten mouth too if it helps me get the ticket.
Superman: TE is about all I'd be able to afford in those set of options...and I must say it's rather fun as it is. Not to mention the other rides there. I say the real X-Prize should belong to the dude that can hold in as many hotdogs while riding the X 50 times consecutively. :)
Not that I've been on the X. Man, I really gotta go to Magic Mountain again.
Anyone read Dale Brown's "Deception Point"? A fun book by the same author of The Davinci Code. Anyway, in it it brought up the dangers (or supposed dangers) of commercializing space. Basically if you gave corporations like say, pepsi, free reign to go into space as they pleased, do you think they would be more concerned with:
a) putting a huge "Drink Pepsi" sign on the moon or
b) continuing the mostly and un-exciting scientific research that NASA currently does.
No offense to corporations, but they are there to make money, and investing a billion dollars to put an earth orbiting banner up is going to satisfy their shareholders more than searching for the origins of the universe. Taken to an extreme think about space and the skies above us being as littered with advertising and crap as the roads and buildings and entertainment that we are subjected to every day are. How long before every shuttle is as littered with badges as a Nascar is?
Maybe it's the 'slippery slope' argument, but the book did a good job of explaining why NASA is in "control" of space and not the corporations.
The brazilian branch of Volkswagen already gave a ticket to a suborbital flight earlier this year (through Space Adventures). The winner is a 24-year old woman. Links: here [www.spaceadventures.com] and here [www.vw.com.br]. I remember the promotional TV spots were very cool, and almost made me wish to buy a VW car. :-)
I am sure other companies worldwide will follow suit.
'Nuff Said.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
C'mon, people jump off buildings and cliffs with parachutes with a good chance of becoming road pizza because there ain't no second chance. Quite a few have been killed BASE jumping but yet it persists.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Just wondering, what type of security will there be for people traveling to space? Will people on the No Fly list be allowed to go? What about racial profiling? I can see it now. I am sorry Mr. Ansari you are not allowed to travel today. You are from the middle east and therfore have to go through an Anal cavity search before we allow you on the plane. But But but, I sponsered the prize that allowed this to happen. Yes, you have it right Mr Ansari, there will be alot of Butt action here today.
MMM yes... Branson.... 'revolutionary' train ran for about an hour then broke down, several near disastrous trips in a balloon, hardly a sound judge of the new technology. Don't think I'll book a trip to space just yet.
> Now there won't be any place where I can go to avoid the tourists.
Try South Dakota
Only have 3.5 minutes to do it ;)
Extra points if you remember the short story published in Analog about 15 years ago.
Many more can afford this. Considering what some people have put into weddings 10k won't be that bad of a fix. Also, factor in what it would cost for 2 or 3 good cruises and you can pay for this trip very easily.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If the usual pattern holds, I would expect they would use the profits from this first meager fleet to scale things up to craft that hold more people (lower cost), or go further (closer to the orbital goal).
At some point the current rocket technology does not scale enough to get them to orbit, but the experience and $$$ generated by the first round will enable them to build newer, more capable systems. As long as there is an influx of cash here, the sky is not going to be the limit.
Before everybody gets swept up in all the hype and euphoria, remember that altitude -- even 100 km -- is easy
For $10 million dollars, why didn't you do it years ago then? I know what your point is but I think there is a pendulum reaction going on here. Some guys are saying, SpaceShipOne is better than the Space Shuttle, which makes guys like you come back with something absurd saying that 100 km is nothing at all.
In reality, and objectively speaking, somewhere in the middle of these two extremist viewpoints is where the truth lies. No, 100 km is not orbit. However, until a couple months ago nobody in the private sector could even go suborbital, and only a 3 governments in the world had done it. So it isn't "easy." Nor is SpaceShipOne a rip off of X-15 like some posters are saying... among many things, the engine is safer and the feather mechanism is unique, and the White Knight is no B-52.
So please, guys, spare the drama on saying how "easy" all of this really is. Oh, and SpaceShipOne does have one similarity to X-15... X-15 led to Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the Shuttle. This is only the absolute beginning for commercial exploration. All this was done with $20 million or so. What do you think bright minds will come up with when 8 or 10 years of suborbital tourism and additional investors have given Virgin Galactic a few hundred million to play with?
Why did NASA chose Sprite as the official soft drink of the Space Shuttle Columbia?
Because they couldn't get seven up!
beowulf cluster of these!
Seems to me that someone has been mixing a lot of stories to come up with this! I actually listened to the press conferences and X Prize coverage. Let me explain what they really said:
Don't get me wrong, I'm as excited about this as the next guy. $250K is still a bargain in today's market, but mixing those stories together made it a lot more exciting sounding than it really is.
This is something I was wondering about myself. When NASA developed the Apollo missions, they were designed in anticipation of about a 90% success rate for each mission. (I believe it was about this and someone can correct me if they know otherwise, but it certainly wasn't incredibly safe.)
I'd be interested to know what the safety goals of Scaled Composites were with their design, what can be done if something goes wrong, and how it relates to commercial viability. Presumably it's much higher than 9 in 10 successes, and there are likely to be plans to work a lot on safety before any serious potential commercial partners would want to be involved. But does this translate to 99/100 successful flights, 999/1000 successful flights, or even better?
So far we've seen two properly successful test flights. That's less than 1/50th of what we've seen of the US Space Shuttle. (Granted that it's far less complicated.)
...for a ride? Sell chance tickets, limited to one to a human slashdotter,once enough accumulated for a ticket, then have a webcast with a live drawing?
what say, owners, nifty idea? what say slashdotters?
Hello?!?
Friends?!?
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
"Man, that's one DOOMED space tourist!"
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This might have a really interesting application for fast travel in a few years. New York to Japan in under an hour anyone?
Do something like that, and CEOs will be lining up to give you money.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Rockets are crap. Until we get something better, don't count on space travel being anything but expensive.
Using rockets to get to space is like using vaccuum tubes to make a computer! Until we get something like a transtor (equivelent for space travel), space travel will be expensive.
BTW, they only got to space boundary, NOT to orbit. The speed difference is about 8x or about 64x more kinetic energy. The difference is the same as cycling and going 100mph. You can't go 100mph on a bike!
CmrTaco. One way trip for him and his liberal site!
I think people will be enamored with the idea of commercial space flight initially, but if the first accident comes early on, its reputation could be damaged for a long time.
Sounds just like The Comet
It was a big deal, and the industry found the problem, fixed it, and the preception that air travel is safe didn't suffer.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I should point out only 3 governments have gone suborbital with people as a payload. Many governments can lob suborbital weapons (India, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, Israel, France, UK... etc).
What SS1 really shows is can be done 'one the cheap' without a massive effort. This means a good hunk of $$$ is going to start flowing.
What about going just a little further than the lowish altitude they reach now?
"Last one into space is a rotten egg!"
and the fermentation of that egg will give birth to a new life here on Earth.
.
-shpoffo
they've crashed a few times. Ticket prices'll fall to $500!!
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
offered to pay for the first half of the trip. Paying for the half that would bring me back down to Earth safely is my responsibility.
Vacuum tubes are crap. Until we get something better, don't count on computing being anything but expensive.
And they've aready announced the next phase of the X-Prize, the X-Prize Cup. CNN covers it here.
SharkJumper
I didn't get a check. And the one your mom owes me for playing with you is late, too.
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
you can experience weightlessness a lot more cheaply on an airplane ($3K for several 20-second periods)
Yes, but there is no way I would manage it in 20 sec. In SSO I can have a chance. Also In my age I do not care about more periods...
If I remember correctly, the superman ride was 55 secs... I timed it 60+ times while waiting in line. Also, could be a little more depending on what you consider "Start" and "End" times, as various people causing problems left me hanging after the ride was done for about 2 minutes, so technically my ride was almost 3 minutes.
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
and the captains log
It seems to me that, as great as space travel sounds, current solutions won't be easily physically tolerated for the average human.
During the broadcast, the announcers said that SpaceShipOne experienced 5g's on re-entry. Can the average human withstand 5g's without some sort of conditioning? That seems to be an awefully high number (most roller coasters max around 3g's and only experience that for split seconds).
Would space tourism then require physical training? If so, it seems in my experience that the majority of people "fizzle out" with any sort of training, and it may put quite a damper on the interest in this sort of thing.
I, for one, hope that someday it will be as easy as hopping on a jet, but I was just curious on the physical implications of the sort of space travel that looks to be accessible (with lots of money) within the next 5-10 years using a system such as SpaceShipOne.
One of the *biggest* assholes I've ever met in my professional career.
yeah, mod me down.
I don't think I've ever seen such a witty troll.
I bow before your mastery of the trollish arts sir!
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
It wasn't funny, certainly wasn't interesting (redundant, if anything) and this is obviously a lame karma whore.
Please treat appropriately.
so...when the earth's trashed we will be able to go somewhere else?
I think $10,000 is gonna be the figure in say 10 years but this is also dependent on builing a craft that can go suborbital with more than 2 passengers, say maybe 12 total, 2 pilots and 10 passengers and do it at least 10 times a week.
Why do you assume people are being duped here? I for one am fully aware of the limitations and how SS1 is nowhere close to being able to orbit. I'd rather orbit, but it is unclear I will ever get that chance. So this may have to be good enough.
And you know what? Without Rutan and the X-Prize, I might never even have come this close to getting a chance.
This is the first step. There are more to follow.
Really? What about Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Orbital Sciences, Arianespace, SeaLaunch and a couple of Russian and Chinese companies whose names I can't think of at the moment? They've been providing commercial space launch services for decades now. Or don't they count because they just launch boring unmanned satellites that lots of people on the ground actually find useful?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I can't think of a better design for an amusement ride designed to produce weightlessness. It's my favorite. I usually like to make my camera float and dance around on the end of its carrying strap. It really is a pretty good zero-gee, unlike some rides where you're actively pulled down faster than free-fall (e.g., Disney's "Tower of Terror" and "Maliboomer").
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sure, it would be great to see the earth from that altitude. But for that price, and only for a few minutes? If you took off during the day, it would be all over before your eyes even had time to adapt enough to see the stars.
Really? What about Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Orbital Sciences, Arianespace, SeaLaunch and a couple of Russian and Chinese companies whose names I can't think of at the moment? They've been providing commercial space launch services for decades now. Or don't they count because they just launch boring unmanned satellites that lots of people on the ground actually find useful?
Boeing and Lockheed Martin are reselling technology originally developed under military or NASA contracts (Delta and Atlas series rockets). SeaLaunch uses reconfigured Soviet rockets. Ariannespace is practically a branch of the French government. The Russian and Chinese services are just middlemen selling space on rockets built for and operated by governments. Right now, Orbital Science's pegasus is the only thing (other than SS1) that comes close to being a privately-developed space launch system, and they had some help from NASA.
Besides, boosting satellites into orbit is hardly "exploration".
0 1 - just my two bits
Like, what if a bunch of Saudi's book a space flight, then hi-jack it?
I guess it's all good, as long as they pay up-front. *shrug*
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
It's a great start but until they can do an orbit of the earth, this isn't going into space, it's just touching space. Save your money for another decade when the rocket technology has refined enough to give them an orbit around earth with the bulk/expense/danger of a Mercury rocket.
Does the envelope extend significantly if you stick wings on the SSO-alike?
Although if most of the flight is glide instead of powered, it might take longer than commercial flight anyway.
I take it you havn't read Robert A. Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon. D. Delos Harriman is a person hero of mine, and this is an interesting book by itself. It also gets into the legal issues of owning non-terrestial real-estate and a very interesting view on how American business really works, not just how it should on paper.
In this book, Heinlein specifically mentions a 7-up ad on the moon (he called it a 6+ soft drink, which I suppose could be anything), and to make things really fun (keep in mind this was written in the 1950's) the protaganist throws a hammer and sickle on a overlay over the moon during a board meeting that includes some FAA representatives.
Of any of the early science fiction that is inspiring the X-Prize and private commercial spaceflight, I would have to say that this book is clearly very influential, and it wouldn't surprise me to see a company called "Harriman Industries" get involved with spaceflight some time in the future, if only to invoke the flavor of Heinlein's future history.
A sad footnote in the book was that the main guy behind the whole project, Harriman, was denied from going into space due to poor health, and the FAA wouldn't give him clearance to get on a spaceship.
How long until we see space marshals keeping our heavens safe from Al-Qaeda ?
It also looks like they are gonig to have an even harder time keeping their cover as space ship one cas a capacity of oh say... about 2 passengers.
I think that Bill Gates, Paul Allen and the rest of MicroSoft's executive team should go on the first flight. Maybe even Darl McBride and his lawyers can squeeze into the economy section.
Kabooom! Yes! Yes! Yes!
After all you're spending some hours with Virgin!
I'm pretty ignorant as can be about physics and space travel or flying a rocket to the upper atmosphere. But basically at a time when NASA could have possibly lost the shuttle program to the hurricanes in Florida, isnt this a good thing either way? Let the rich take a "high in the sky" flight. But also when NASA has become mired in a 20+ yr old shuttle fleet, isnt this a perfectly timed boost for the space industry?
Just my thoughts....
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The SC dual ship design is so simple it makes me sick, Why hasnt this been done before? the X-15 and pegasus flew this way I wonder why this technology was so stagnant.
Rutan claims he's "private enterprise", and he is in the sense that he doesn't take money directly from the government. But he can't help but benefit from all that was done before him by various government and military space programs. Even Rutan's pilots got most of their training and experience in the military.
As was said about the atomic bomb shortly after it was used for the first time, the only real "secret" of the atomic bomb was the knowledge that it was possible. When Rutan does something that hasn't already been done for 40 years by a government, then he'll qualify as a true private-enterprise pioneer.
And 3.5 minute joyrides are? I guess it depends on your definition of the term. By the one I like, this has been a banner year for space exploration. Nearly all of it has been done by JPL and related groups and none of it has involved any astronauts.(Pasted from this article)
One-man version of SpaceShipOne may be next stage in development of space holidays
A one-person version of Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne that reaches an orbit of 130km (81 miles) [note: this is likely a misquote or error, as orbits below 350km are generally unstable] to rendezvous with an orbiting hotel may form the next stage of Burt Rutan's private manned spaceflight plans.
Speaking at a lecture organised by the Manx Festival of Aviation at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London, the aerospace designer detailed how such an orbital vehicle could be evolved from his existing three-man, suborbital 3,000kg (6,600lb) SpaceShipOne. The amount of spacecraft mass dedicated to fuel would be increased to achieve the greater altitude and speed required.
"We'd have a small cramped cabin for the orbital flight and you'd be in it for a long time. You'd want to go to a hotel [because of that] and for orbital tourism you'd want an altitude of 130km," says Rutan.
In his lecture, Rutan referred to plans by Robert Bigelow, founder of Bigelow Aerospace, to develop a space hotel based on NASA-originated inflatable habitat technology.
Before Rutan begins work on orbital flight technology, he will attempt to win the X-Prize, which requires two suborbital flights within two weeks carrying a mass equivalent to three people. Rutan's first flight is scheduled for 29 September and his second for 4 October. But before he flies for the second time, competing Canadian X-Prize team da Vinci Project is scheduled to try to reach space in its Wild Fire rocket on 2 October.
Another X-Prize team, Space Transportation, saw its Rubicon One rocket fail a flight test in Washington on 8 August seconds after launch. The engines of the $20,000 rocket failed after it reached an altitude of 1,000ft (305m). Rubicon One's remains crashed to Earth 61m from its launch site after its parachute system failed. It was carrying three dummies representing the pilot and passengers.
Yep. For years I was thinking that I would have to pay millions to NASA to launch my remains, not ashes, into space in some sort of photon-torpedoe container. Now, I just have to spend a round $100,000 or more and my body can go on forever (in relative terms unless I get intercepted by any space aliens and later revived or collide with something else)!!
Now I can be entombed in space. Just send me towards the Pleiadian star system!
With the third successful launch of SSO... Burt et al can now start marketting a turnkey manned spaceprogram to two bit tin pot dictators all over the world who dream of glory. They obviously have the money from sucking their countries dry, so Paul can start raking in the money.
Spin it however makes you happy, but to me there's still a big difference between designing and building your own spacecraft and selling copies of one you designed in the '70s under a billion dollar Air Force contract, or bought as military surplus from Russia.
3.5 minute joyrides aren't real "exploration" either. However they seem to me far more likely to lead to widespread access to space (and therefore more exploration) than a defense-industry conglomerate putting up yet another TV sat on a modified ICBM booster.
0 1 - just my two bits
OK, let's NOT invoke Moore's Law here, as we are dealing with a serious "energy budget" problem.
.
However, let's assume a 5% improvement in performance (altitude) every year:
1) 105 km
2) 110 km
3) 116 km
. .
10) 163 km
That's assuming no "revolutionary" advances and a rather crummy increment of improvement. That still brings the "ride time" up a fair amount every year.
Of course, if any of these companies turns a profit, there will be a dozen other start ups, 11 of which go bankrupt, and one of which invents Something Even Better, but perhaps I'm being too optomistic.
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?
Please explain how 3.5 minute joyrides in a dead-end vehicle that comes nowhere near orbit are going to lead to more space exploration. Please don't repeat the tired old cliche that we need humans in space to interest the public in space science. That's what got us a useless space station that nobody cares about and a grounded shuttle fleet that's not much more useful even when it flies. A lack of astronauts on the Mars rovers or Cassini didn't seem to stop a lot of folks from becoming intensely interested in those missions because, unlike the manned program, they're actually doing some real space exploration!
$100,000 today, and in 5 years, or 10? Computers that cost $100,000 in 1975 cost what - $10,000 in 1985 and $2,000 in 1995 and $700 today (but for much much more). One can but asume (hope) that high cost high tech spacecraft manufacturing of will go this way too.
Please let me say that "Tours Into Space", is a good thing.
But the following would be an Engineering Goal worthy of doing:
"The First Non Government Team to Return, and then Send Up a 40 FOOT DC with a 26850 kg pay load, Piloted by at least one person. 5 times in 50 days without a delivery problem."
Prize Money is to be one U.S. Gold Dollar Coin.
People were interested in the mars rovers because that was the only space science going on at the time. Holding the public's intrest is not why we need people in space (though it is a nice fringe benefit). We need people in space because the goal of space exploration should be to have a large, permanent population in space and on other planets. Orbiting hotels and SS1's successor craft look like they're going to make a lot more progress toward that goal than NASA's fleet of miniature rovers and their sad excuse for a space station.
Rovers are neat for scouting out potential landing sites for a future manned mission, but they are not anywhere close to being able to really explore a planet. Present rovers don't travel fast enough, they get stuck in anything but the smoothest terrain, they can't improvise, they can't act autonomously, and if something doesn't go exactly as planned you have to wait many hours for another radio transmission window to load updated instructions. Humans can act on their own judgement, can travel faster and farther from the landing site, can improvise new tools if they need to do something that wasn't in the original mission plan, and can answer questions from ground control that scientists working from rover images can only guess at (like whether a dark blotch on a photo is a darker spot in the rock, or just a shadow).
The bigger question is, what's the point of knowing about Martian geology or if we're never going to go there to experience it directly? If the only way we're ever going to see Mars is through a computer screen, we might as well just play Doom 3!
0 1 - just my two bits
Yes, it must be a diffrent ride, the one I went on was at 6 flags in PA, and you strapped yourself in and hung down below the track while whooosh whoooshing around.
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
Why only one pilot? I'm guessing it is still a matter of risk. Even with the most verbose disclaimers being signed, if people died there would still be a potential for financial damages, and perhaps even willing payout of damages. (Not every company is populated by jerks - some recognize the need to do all they can to help survivors after an accident.)
Then there's also training. To even just be a passenger still takes some degree of training, and by the terms of the prize, it's an unnecessary bit of training.
And don't forget that all these people knew each other and were friends from their time spent prepping for this. Would you send three friends into a deadly situation when doing so has the same likelyhood of success as just sending one?
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Should be funny.