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More SpaceShipTwo Details
Anonymous Coward from Manitoba writes "BBC news is reporting more details about Burt Rutan's proposed SpaceShipTwo. Apparently the new flyer will include five to eight passenger seats and have the 'same diameter crew cabin as a Gulfstream V business jet'. It will fly much higher than SpaceShip One - up to '135-140 km' that will permit an additional 90 seconds of microgravity. This will be important, since 'we want this roller coaster-type bar that you fold out of the way and you can float around'. They are also planning to 'have the option of landing in a different place from where they took off'. I can't wait until we can ride SpaceShipThree across the Atlantic in 20 minutes!"
... my husband could take a hint from spaceship two.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Until they get somewhere in the neighboorhood of SpaceShipTwentyEight, its still gonna be too expensive for me!
Electrons are free; it is moving them that becomes expensive.
"This experience is going to have very few restrictions on what you can do because these payloads are doing it for fun and every person has a different idea of what fun is.
Floating in space (Ansari X-Prize)
The X-prize vision is about to be realised
"Does that mean that some guy and his girl might want to take the whole ship? OK!"
Is that a euphemism for zero gravity sex? It'll be one of the few times when being quick is actually good! Also, with presumably multi-year waiting lists, it'll take performance anxiety to new high.
I can't wait until we can ride SpaceShipThree across the Atlantic in 20 minutes!
...and imagine still wasting one hour travelling to the air/spaceport, three ours in check-in and security lanes, half an hour on the other end to get your luggage back, and yet one hour travelling off the port.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
I think it is absolutely amazing that ordinary people will be able to experience space and zero gravity. But I also think that we need to look into the environmental aspects of this development.
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If we will come to see daily flights of maybe hundreds of planes it might have a significant impact on the ozone layer and thus our health. It is therefore important to get an estimate of the impact on the ozone layer so that cleaner fuels and other measures can be taken to prevent this.
Here is a bit of background info on the ozone layer and the impact of the space shuttle and high flying aircraft and rockets on it:
http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/summ
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ozone-depletion/intro/
the point is that a single jumbo actually WOULD transfer more people over the atlantic in a weeks time perioid than a cruiseliner ever would be able to.
But it will use disproportionately more fuel to do so.
I think you're wrong.
The Queen Mary 2, which is a modern and fuel-efficient cruise ship, moves 50 feet per gallon, which is about 0.01 miles per gallon. At 2,712 persons (which includes 921 crew, by the way), that's 25.8 person-miles per gallon. Source data.
A Boeing 747-400, which is a modern and fuel-efficient jumbo jet, moves 666 feet per gallon, which is about 0.13 miles per gallon. At 524 persons (not including crew), that's 66.3 person-miles per gallon. Source data.
That makes the jumbo-jet nearly three times more fuel-efficient than the cruise ship. I realize that they don't use the same types of fuel so a real efficiency comparison might require some additional correction factors, but I bet the jumbo jet still comes out way ahead. Especially if you didn't give the cruise ship the unfair advantage of counting the crew in the calculations.