Slashdot Mirror
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!"
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.
... 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.
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.
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.
Maybe not for you, but if you were a multi-millionaire, $100K may seem a pretty small price tag for the opportunity to do something truly unique like this. This is not targetting the average man on the street, it's an exotic vacation for the very rich.
This was pretty much the aim of SpaceShip One from the beginning. The X-Prize just helped to give it that extra edge of excitement and competition that makes the media drool and gets you lots of free press. Winning it is a springboard to the tourism industry, but it wasn't the primary goal. This thing would have been eventually used for space tourism whether it won the X-Prize or not.
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?
actually, it will never drop to $10000 thanks to inflation, you'll actually be waiting till $100000 is minimun wage for a year of simple labor. We'll also have to build about 100 space elevators before the cost drops to a level that the top 5% of the global population can afford (ie, the united states public). Wooo, boy i wish i had a billion laying around.
00010111 always try everything twice
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.
Well *of course*. Who you think owned the first automobiles? The first airplanes? The first big screen TVs?, etc. Get my point?
TODO: Something witty here...
It's going to come down rapidly over time. Dennis Tito paid $20M for a trip to the space station, Paul Allen paid $20M for his own spaceship company (and he's already got $10M back from it). Give it a while and it won't be that expensive to spend a week in an inflatable space hotel.
$100K to see what very few other mortals have in the course of history is exactly what the new rich would give, that and more I am sure.
When it is common for people to sink well over that into an entertainment room that they use occasionaly or only to brag to the neighbors I am sure that there will be a long line. There are an increasing number of people in the world that have $100K in pocket change. I am sure that there are lots of people who would pay much more than that jut to first.
Now if that line became a public list then we would know who to hit up for the next crazy idea we have.
.. 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.
Please note that most real leaps in technology are only available to the fabulously wealthy at first.
Just look at airplanes. The first commercial flights were really expensive and only an exotic diversion for the rich. Now, I can fly across this country and back again for a couple of hundred bucks.
Cars were quite expensive until the Model T revolutionized the manufacture and made them cheap enough for everyone.
Entry level computers were multi-thousand dollar machines as recent as 5-10 years ago and now you can have a new machine every year for under $1 a day.
The only way that "affordable for the average person" arrives is to go through a phase of "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" first.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
I don't think you want to drink any carbonated beverages in space. I assume when you open up a bottle of 7UP in microgravity, the bubbles would begin to form, but then they wouldn't go anywhere, they'd just clump and get bigger.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
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!
Your liver grows back after a while, so..
10 sell portion of liver, put money in back
20 let livel grow back to normal
30 if $bank_total > $amount_for trip then goto 50
40 goto 10
50 goto "space"
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
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.
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.
Huh? how much of the Earth's resources are spent on the laughing gas and rubber used to blast off? Even it it was as common as jumbo jets, you would still call this "a considerable drain"?
Plus where do you think the money goes once you pay it? Scaled and Virgin isn't going to set it on fire. It's going to go to the salaries of their workers and to the vendors who are providing parts, shareholders, etc.
This has got to be a troll.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Bullshit. John Carmack wrote about a similar thing (Diamandis' Zero G airplane ride) the other week: "Like most people, he was hitting me up to invest in his company, but I said that I would rather be a customer than an investor (where possible, this is a better way to support companies). "
By buying a space tourism ticket, you are helping drive the development of cheap, reusable, sustainable space faring technology in the absolutely best way possible. You are paying the salaries of the people who are working on the next generation spacecraft, and spurring investment and competition toward improving spaceflight. To say that this does "absolutely nothing to benefit society" is so stupid and short sighted I don't know where to begin.
Beyond that I would like to say that I find your general attitude despicable. When people make money fairly - that is given to them by people who made a free choice to do so - they have a right to do as they please with that money. They owe NOTHING to the the looters and moochers who whine and complain because they did not feel inclined to make the money themselves. Egoism is the ultimate morality: it is forced , faked, altruism that is the root of evil.
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.
Maybe he was actually referring to orbit. You dont think that the company is going to stand still and just offer outer-atmospheric hops for the next decade do you?
And of course everything that you do is a "benefit to society". Right. Since when did we mandate that every little thing that everyone does must provide some nebulous "benefit to society"? And what's the point of benefiting society if not to beneift the individuals that make up that society?
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.
The shuttle costs too much because it takes a lot of effort to recondition everything, and if anything breaks, you've just lost a crew, so you'd better make sure it's right.
The big thing that it's showing is that space startups have finally learned their lesson.
There have been startups since the 70s trying to get to orbit for cheap, but they've either been squeezed out by the existing players or run out of money before they actually prove their point, never even finishing the prototypes.
The 2000s startups are much smarter and have managed to get flying and actually produce real hardware.
The biggest contribution to progress, I think, is showing that if you don't run out of money, you *can* deliver on your promises. Which really tends to help other, newer, startups find investors so that they can have a little better assurance that they won't be pouring money down the drain.
Armadillo still has the option to go either way. They have a mixed-monopropellant engine that's good for cheap suborbital flights -- a little bit of methanol mixed in with hydrogen peroxide gives you a reasonable amount of boost. And they are also working on a conventional bipropellant engine. They don't need to decide on where to put their effort for another year, according to the latest updates.
Also don't forget SpaceX, who is completely not an X-prize contender but is simply concentrating on reducing the cost of payload to orbit, but by a large margin. Or XCOR, who has been spending a lot of time on economical and safe liquid-fueled engines.
Rutan did next to nothing as far as propellant development goes. Two hybrid-rocket startups competed for the job. So he doesn't care about weather there's a HTPB+NOS engine or if there's an XCOR liquid rocket, as long as it fits in the bolt-on propulsion section.
There's a number of interesting ways to get down from space that haven't been adequately explored. The denser your vehicle, the hotter it is on reentry, so simply carying more fuel in the upper stage, or having an SSTO, means that you can use lighter weight heat shielding. Or you can just have a carbon-carbon base on your craft and Burt's orange ablative covering on the rest and fly a feathered approach like SpaceShipOne.
Gentoo Sucks
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.
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.
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?
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!