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20k Down Can Get You Up Into Space
TheOzz writes "Virgin Galactic announced this week that space tourism will be a reality by 2008. The company is already taking $20,000 deposits for the estimated $200,000 seats on their new spaceships. You can reserve your seat today at the Virgin Galactic web site. The Virgin Group's Branson teamed up with SpaceShipOne builder Burt Rutan to form The Spaceship Company that will build these new commercial spaceships. They are building 9-person spaceships that will carry 7 paying passengers and two crew members, according to space.com. They report that test flights should start in 2007."
From the web page:
The first flights are planned to begin in 2008. We are now starting to take reservations and deposit commitments for the first year of operations. The ticket price has been set at US$200,000 and the minimum, fully refundable deposit to secure your spaceship seat is US$20,000.
$200,000 for going to space without going out of your ship is fair, but $1 million - 5 times as much - for going near the moon without going out of your ship is unfair?
Just one more thing to do when I win the lottery.
Isn't that a synonym for Slashdotters in Space?
1. Take $20k down.
2. Invest.
3. Refund original $20k in 2008
4. Profit!
Thats much cheaer then the 20 million you have to pay to go on Souz :)
But with Souz you get to stay on ISS for a few days
Visit my site @ http://www.madtorrent.com
Your seat cushion can be used as a heat shield during the rapid descent.
Mods should get to this, but... that's what "20k Down" means. It's a down-payment; synonymous with "deposit."
SIG: HUP
Notice anything about their expected demographic?
I'm suprised there's no HRH and 'Bill Gates' options
FGD 135
I think the real news here isn't the fact that they're taking deposits (they've been doing this for a while), but that Branson and Rutan have started up a new business, "The Spaceship Company."
... or Fours) for Virgin Galactic, and for any other spaceline company that wants a suborbital craft. You can assume that the company is structured so as to avoid running into export roadblocks, while keeping the British financial backer in the loop.
From here:
But today's announcement reflects a finer appreciation of the financial and regulatory realities. Several months ago, Rutan complained to Congress that U.S. export restrictions [NOTE: These are ITAR restrictions, the same ones which turned this tattoo of encryption code into a munition a few years back] were making it difficult for the British Virgin Galactic project to move forward.
The new arrangement restructures the deal: The Rutan-Branson venture, called The Spaceship Company, will license SpaceShipOne's technology from Mojave Aerospace Ventures, the company set up with financial backing from software billionaire Paul Allen and intellectual property from Rutan's Scaled Composites.
The Spaceship Company will then do the actual building of SpaceShipTwos (or Threes
If you are in a place in your life where spending $200,000 to be taken up above the atmostphere for a little while seems like a good idea, you probably don't give a shit about $20,000.
Note to those who are mere millionaires instead of billionaires: It would be much cheaper and almost as good to get one of your rich asshole friends to take you along for a ride on their Gulfstream V jets sometimes. Those private gets fly high enough that the sky is dark blue in the daytime. Very cool. Plus, there's no need to wear a gay-ass looking space suit.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
After 2001 debuted, someone at PanAm got smart and instead of hanging up on what they thought were cranks looking for tickets to the moon, they started taking cataloged down payments on the first PanAm flights to the moon...
One way or the other, I want to visit my one acre on the moon!
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I'm too chicken (and far, far too poor) to be one of the first people to go on a trip like this, but I'm very happy to see it being done. I'm 25 and have many childhood memories of how space was the future and how someday I'd get to visit the moon (maybe even live there) and all that. Somewhere along the line all of that kind of talk just ended and space faded from people's view. It has indeed been a sad thing to not have some kind of huge bigger-than-seems-possible goal to strive for as a nation or even as a species. I hope this new commercial space industry can bring some of the magic back.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Funded by Dr Chirinjeev Kathuria, they see the secret to success as a modernised liquid oxygen/alcohol rocket motor based on the German V2, which proved its reliability in over 3,000 past flights (more history via that web page). The company uses the Canadian Arrow Space Centre.
you had me at #!
Will they accept a personal check the day of the launch? ;)
Content Management System: A pretentious way of saying "text editor."
Do they actually go into space? Do they orbit? Or do they just do the spaceshipone "we've breached the top of the atmosphere, then come back down! whee!"
from the bad-credit-no-credit-come-on-down dept.
but do they habla español?
This is not space travel. I don't care that a bunch of geeks in a room defined "space" as 100KM, space travel means CONTROLLED space travel. This is just shooting people really high and letting them fall to earth, at which point it's normal air travel.
We could fly before the Wright Brothers, but what made their accomplishment noteworthy was that it was controlled, powered flight. This is uncontrolled powered space travel. It's a stunt.
Space travel means an orbital insertion. Controlled powered space travel.
Granted, this is a necessary step. I'm glad they're doing it. But I hate all the hype they're putting into this. I'm afraid that people, once they figure out it's a very expensive stunt that isn't really space travel, are going to poison the well for this sort of thing.
Be honest: Would you really be impressed with someone who rode this thing, other than the fact that they were able to shell out 200 grand? Would you look at them as Astronauts? I wouldn't.
Bah.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
And you can charter one for about $5k/hour here: http://www.aircharternetwork.com/pages/faq.html
I think what most people want from a trip to space is to muck about in zero gee. If that's the case they could get much more bang for their buck with this. Just the down payment for Branson's Most Excellent Adventure would buy five of these trips.
Down payment on space flight = $20K
Final payment on space flight = $180K
Realizing you spent $200K to have a fellow passenger throw up on you in Space = priceless
Virgin's already got my deposit. I'm going.
The naysayers can say what they want, but those of who are actually involved and actually paying for tickets are fully apprised of what the spaceship is, where it's going, and for how long.
It's been my dream ever since I knew space existed to get there, and since I can afford it, $200,000 for a few minutes there is worth it to me.
No, this isn't controlled orbital insertion, but it is still a flight into space, hence spaceflight, and flights like these are a vital first step toward getting real civilian orbital travel working, and I'll be first in line for that, too. If I have any money left, that is.
You guys can whine about ballistic space travel not being real spaceflight all you want. I know what it is, I have no doubts about its value to me, and I'm going for a ride on a rocketship!
When Burt Rutan and Paul Allen have the guts to ride that fucker then I'll get in it. If it's such a fun thing why haven't they been up in it yet?
It's not the Sci-Fi that makes the Shuttle look like a hunk of junk.
It's the memory of the Saturn V and the present-day versatility of the Soyuz (though admittedly Soyuz can't carry as much of a payload as the shuttle).
I'll wait and get my ticket on priceline.com.
I just got back from the Experimental Aircraft Association convention and flyin at Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Burt Rutan, Paul Allen, Richard Branson, Mike Melville, Brian Bennie and a bunch of Scaled Composite and Virgin people were there. Mike Melville flew the White Knight to the show, carrying Mr and Mrs Rutan in SpaceShip One.
I heard a press conference and no less than six 90 minute talks about Rutan's space program from SpaceShip One and SpaceShip Two principles.
Here are some more or less random factoids that were discussed in detail at Oshkosh:
1) The White Knight with attached SpaceShip One were remarkably graceful in flight, far more so than the videos I had seen would have suggested.
2) Allen said that the cost of the entire SpaceShip One program were about the same as a ride to the ISS on Soyuz, i.e. on the order of $20 million dollars.
3) Rutan and his people reveled a number of problems that I had not seen in the press prior to this week. For example, on one of the early White Knight flights one of the nose wheels struck a rough spot in the runway during the take off roll. This nose wheel shimmied to the point were the nose wheel detached from the airframe. White Knight had to make a three wheel one stump landing.
4) The first flight into space exceeded 100km of altitude by only a little more than 100 meters. There was great concern that the motor didn't have sufficient impulse to attain the X-Prize goal of 100km altitude when carrying one human pilot and two passengers or 400 pounds of ballast. They went so far as to buy solid rocket booster motors from Thiokol. In the end they were able to improve the performance of the basic engine without needing these extra boosters. Rutan was coy about exactly how this was done, but the two official X Prize flights did exceed 100Km by comfortable margins. He did mention that engineers from both the winning motor company, SpaceDev of California, and the losing company, EAC of Florida, assisted in improving the motor. They have one more complete motor that was not used.
5) The maximum temperature during reentry was on the order of 200F. The craft experienced greater heating on ascent rather than descent. This heat was control by 14 pounds of Scaled proprietary thermal protection material on the leading edges of the wing.
6) Both pilots were effusive in their praise of the "care free" feathered reentry system. They both said that flying the ascent was very demanding, but that during re-entry they had nothing to do except enjoy the ride.
7) SpaceShip Two will be "one hundred times safer than any previous manned space system" according to Rutan. His goal is to attain a safety level equivalent to the airliners of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
8) Scaled Composites will design SpaceShip Two. The SpaceShip Company will manufacture the craft, Scaled will test and certify the craft. Spacelines such as Virgin Galactic will purchase and operate SpaceShip Two and its carrier aircraft.
10) Each SpaceShip Two and carrier will be individually flight tested and certified. This is an approved alternate certification method to that used for mass produced aircraft. By testing each craft individually, they do not have to provide conformity data back to raw materials as is done with airliners.
11) Rutan anticipates 50 to 100 test flights prior to certification and paid passenger travel. Rutan will fly on some of these flights. In fact, he expects that during the test phase, prior to paid passenger flights, more people will fly into space on SpaceShip Two than have ever flown in space by all other craft.
11) SpaceShip One flew straight up, and recovered straight down. SpaceShip Two will fly 200 to 300 miles down range. Rutan anticipates that Virgin will launch SpaceShip Two over the Pacific Ocean and recovering it at Mohave. This will provide several minutes of atmospheric flight at Mach 2-3 during ascent and descent, providing a Concorde like experience.
12) Li
but how much to get you down?
Unknown at this point what will be allowed, but you can be pretty sure they'll be more than happy to provide a keepsake DVD afterwards. Watch them charge $69.95 for it, too.
A well known scam in the US involves taking investment money and buying a home in Florida. Then, once bankruptcy is called, the home that all of the investment is locked up in, gets sold by the individual. As I understand it, even if the court knew this for a fact, it's against law in Florida to seize someones home. A court can pierce the corporate veil in cases of fraud or self-dealing similar to this one, allowing corporate debts to be collected against the owners/shareholders. Also, while many states protect a person's homestead from bankruptcy proceedings, I doubt any of them protect property obtained with the proceeds of a crime (here, fraud).