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Draft Guidelines for Space Tourists
IZ Reloaded writes "Draft guidelines for space tourists have already been written in the United States." From the article: "A paying customer will now be able to fly into space once he has been informed and accepts the risks of space travel. There are several factors to take into account, depending on whether a passenger is taking a speedy "pop top," up-and-down, suborbital voyage, versus climbing onboard space machinery to roar off into orbit for an extended stay."
we don't require a people to be certified to drive a race car
Yes we do - at least for organized races in the US. The SCCA, NASCAR, CART/IRL, NHRA and AHRA all take licensing and qualification (and safety inspections) very seriously. I heard this one story about a racecar builder who got out of a major speeding ticket by, when the cop asked see his racing license, produced one.
You're looking for quotes? See my journal.
In my state I'm pretty sure that although it is legal to dive without a cert, no dive shop will fill your tanks -- too much liability risk?
But really there's no reason not to get a scuba certification if you want to dive. They're cheap, not time consuming, and offer incredible value for the money. Note: the PADI Open Water Diver certification is, in the words of my instructor, a "learner's permit". My instructor made me promise to get the AOWD at an absolute minimum if I want to continue diving.
It's a lot of fun. My dive certification was definately the coolest class I've ever taken. Even if you don't count the practical which, by the way, was fucking awesome. :) I'm starting up my AOWD cert really soon, after which I'll take my Rescue Diver and then probably stop. I've got no practical need for a pro cert like Divemaster and I am very unlikely to dive anywhere I'll need the MSD cert.
And to anyone who thinks they can skip out on training: how deep can you go? how long can you safely stay down there? does your insurance cover decompression sickness? do you know that Divers Down only carries certified divers?
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
For sub-orbital flights, NASA (and others) offer sounding rockets for just a few hundred thousand dollars per flight.
University researchers already have a number of options. The astronomical research (in which I am involved) will certainly NOT be helped by adding a human to the payload, so this news story is irrelevant to us.
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
I mean like whats there seriously... Ohh wait, when we start running low on oils and other hydrocarbons on Earth(the ones we use to manufacture plastics and other industrial goods), we got a nice big giant "Hydrocarbon Planet" named Titan to visit for all of our plastics need.
.1c in a reasonable amount of time, VASIMR? Gas Dynamic Mirror Fusion? Or Fission Fragment Rocket? Or those lovely but slow Ion Drives?
.2*c, and in some cases up to even .5*c (I'm not very familiar with Gas Dynamic Mirror Fusion so I don't want to make claims on that one). However, none of the
Plastics and other petroleum products can be synthesized using other sources of hydrocarbons. It is more complicated, energy intensive, of course more expensive; that is why petroleum is currently used. So when oil reserves are depleted there will still be plastics, but they won't be nearly as cheap as the are today.
Maybe you didn't mean to, but you sound like an alarmist with this. Yes there will be huge problems as oil becomes scarce, but the disapearance of industrial polymers isn't one of them.
Now to figure out how to get our ships to go at least
Theoretically, most of the propulsion systems you mentioned can get beyond
On thing about ion drives though, "slow" is somewhat of an misreprensentation. Their thrust is lower, but their Isp is so high that their "burns" can be days even weeks.
A few years ago, I saw a comparision between the flight times of different hypothetical missions to Mars. Given the same payloads, the ion drive mission had a faster travel time, 3 to 4 months vs 6 for the chemical. The ion drives could actually attain a higher deltaV than the chemicals (even with gravity assist) because they can boost for much longer voyage.
As far as interplanetary travel, unless something really unsual like warp engines or artifical wormholes becomes a reality, I would go with electrical propulsion. Specfically, large Holl-effect thrusters (similar ion drives, but using electro magnetic fields instead of charged grids that get worn away over time), with electrical generators in the megawatt range (nuclear or matter-antimatter generators). In engines like ion drives and Holl-effects, thrust scales with the potential difference you subject the charged particles of your exhaust to. Potentially, you can accelerate roughly half the distance. Then coast for a while, and reverse thrust to slow down enough to get to your destination.
VASIMRs are interesting. However, their is quite abit of wear in the engines because technically the fuel is a shaped surface that is gradually ablated. Thus total time the engine can be run is limited. Holl-effects only need a supply of noble gases for fuel. Ion drives need both fuel and eventual replacement of grids, but these grids are far smaller and have far less mass than the cones of a VASIMR.
Of course all of this is only tangential to the topic!