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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!"
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
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Oh, in that case nevermind what I said before
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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.
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.
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?
..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?
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.
You know what really sucks, mainly older folks will be able to go up (as mainly older folks have that kind of cash to burn) and the time to enjoy something like space is at young ripe age...how many 80 year olds can survive the take off. It's a health hazard to say the least.
Well I better find me a rich wife.
The price is 100 grand now, it will come down - first the insane rich will buy it, then the ultra rich, then the corporations for their big clients, then the rich, and eventually we will..I would wager 10-15 years
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
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!
$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)
This got me wondering, how much would 10,000,000 pennies weigh on Earth? Assuming you are in a area with 1.0g gravity and you collect nothing but post 1982 pennies, your jar is going to weigh in at 25,000 kg before you hand it off to Virgin in exhange for a ticket.
For those of you not well versed in the Metric system, this is about 27.6 tons (not counting the weight of the jar). You will probably also have a significant fraction (perhaps greater than 100%) of all pennies ever produced.
I read the internet for the articles.
Yes. As far as I'm concerned, if you can't put yourself in orbit you can't really say you've gone to space. You just touched it.
Besides, being able to see the whole world in both night and day, big weather, a sunrise, a sunset, and so forth, would make this a much more interesting trip than just going up and coming down.
Anyway, I presume that would be the next space prize.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
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 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)
The number of US pennies minted in 2004 was 4,952,000,000. So the number of pennies needed for the trip is only about 0.2% of the number of pennies minted in the last year.
Nope, nope, wrong, wrong, wrong, nope, wrong.
To get SpaceShipOne to make it to altitude, they had to actually strip over a pound of *unused wiring*, among other things. Every pound of mass you cut from it gives you almost 150 feet of extra altitude. You'd be crazy to think of adding the mass of the White Knight to it and expecting it to go anywhere.
This is one of the most basic parts of rocketry: multiple stages are the only economic way to get low-ISP/high tank mass craft to perform well. And SpaceShipOne is definitely one of those (heavy nitrous tanks, ISP of around 250(!)).
There's a reason why almost all serious proposed SSTO designs are very high ISP and very low tank mass; it just doesn't work otherwise.
Now, there are alternatives to carring the craft on the underbelly of a carrier. One I'd like to see is a tow-launch vehicle with midair fuelling. You can tow to altitude and fuel using even a cheap, used commodity aircraft, which is known to be safe, pilots are plentiful and cheap, maintinance is predictable, parts are mass produced, etc. The tow plane would be essentially a negligable portion of your cost, and even the poorest funded of X-prize teams could afford one.
By fuelling in midair (not really much harder than fuelling on the ground for most fuels/oxidizers, if your line is attached from takeoff and has more slack than the tow line; you just need to take the pumps and a power source along as well as the fuel. Doesn't work for solid fuels and is a poor choice for pressurized fluids, however), you can drastically reduce the required landing gear strength and save yourself a lot of mass.
Still, this whole getting into "space" thing is kinda silly, apart from a 3 minute free-fall and a good view. It's an adrenaline kick, but it's so far from what is needed for orbital, it's not even funny.
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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?
And they've aready announced the next phase of the X-Prize, the X-Prize Cup. CNN covers it here.
SharkJumper