Space Race 2.0 has Begun

An anonymous reader writes "MSNBC has a story about a second company starting up to compete with Virgin Galactic. Both are planning on operating passenger sub-orbital flights. Will this new Space Race usher in more new technologies into our daily lives, like the previous one? Will the competition to go higher/faster lead to orbital tourism?" From the article: "The company that helped put three millionaires into orbit has teamed up with Russia's Federal Space Agency and the financial backers of the $10 million Ansari X Prize to develop a new breed of suborbital passenger spaceship. Thursday's announcement by Virginia-based Space Adventures herald the entry of new international players in the commercial space race -- a race that is expected to enter a critical phase in the next year or two."

Comments

Forgive me if this is a stupid question...

[Y-Crate]

Would it be possible to use suborbital craft such as this as a means to provide rapid transportation between distant terrestrial locations?

If I recall correctly, ICBMs take suborbital, not orbital trajectories, and they are quite time savers when you want to wipe out a city, so could the same approach be applied to less malevolent projects?

New York to Tokyo in 30 minutes, anyone?

Re:Forgive me if this is a stupid question...

[Zantetsuken]

If you wanted to go as you said, from NY to Tokyo in 30min, you would have to be on AT LEAST a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjetscramjet as the average ICBMs built between the 60s and present would take (my guess) around 2 hours to make that trip.

Not to mention what the other posts responding to yours say, about how the rapid acceleration would create a high number of G forces

Even if you lived through the acceleration, a single trip would cost how many millions of dollars???

What about shipping packages?

[CRCulver]

I'm surprised that so far all of the buzz has been about passenger transport and ignores other applications. The science fiction writer Michael Flynn's future history starting with Firestar has FedEx as one of the first industries signing on to the new convenient space flight. Think about how much of an edge on its competition a company would have if it could deliver a package anywhere on Earth in just a couple of hours.

Re:What about shipping packages?

[coofercat]

Actually, when the X-Prize was first announced, various larger courier companies expressed an interest. I believe it was a UPS spokesperson who summed it up nicely:

"We'd be able to say that if you sent a package from Sydney by 9am, we could deliver to Los Angeles by 5pm the day before"

(hopefully properly quoted!)

Pretty exciting stuff. I understand it's possible to get anywhere in the world in around 45 minutes via space. Of course, the journey may not be all that pleasant (high-G, lots of discomfort on re-entry etc), but freight really doesn't mind that sort of thing. Given enough years at it, private enterprise would solve those problems, making space journeys the same as taking a plane now.

The real challenge...

[Darth Liberus]

...is can you make it safe, fast, and cost-effective? Blasting off into space is cool, but will 2 hours + a lot of money + a good chance of blowing up outweigh a 12 hour, reasonbly priced and safe trip?

Don't get me wrong, this is cool. But suborbital travel will need to deal with these issues lest they go the way of the Concorde.

Re:New technologies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Both of the replies currently visible to your post have some really stupid things, but here's a good one for you: integrated circuits. The Minuteman II ICBM program and the Apollo program were the first major customers for ICs. It's probably safe to say that without this initial push from two space programs, the development of ICs would have proceeded significantly slower, and thus modern computers would be years behind where they are today. This obviously changes your daily life, seeing as how you're posting on slashdot.

As revelant as the Americas Cup.

[dotmax]

This sort of thing is going to have as much impact and relevance to society at large as the Americas Cup does. Pretty toys, a few specialist firms involved in one-off designs, and technology not really germane to anything beyond its own sandbox of reality.

There ain't no breakthroughs to be had! Space flight with rockets is fabu $$$, period. Schmancy IRBMs with inflight entertainment isn't ... significant. It's just symptomatic of a point in industrilized society where we have a buttload of disposable income and a lot of wealthy people. Which is fine, no prob, wish i was one, but technical breakthrough? Not in any meaningful way.

Seriously: "space tourism" relates to manned space flight the way the heavies do it (US, Russia and now China) similarly to the way the old Seawolf submarine ride at Disneyland compares to the Jimmuh (SSN23, as Seawolf submarine in its own right). Possibly we could substitute the Disneyland sub with one of those excursion toys you sometimes see in the carribean -- but still, not an innovator, just a cool toy. .max

Re:What's the point?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

In the early days of aviation, there was a phenomenon that we might call today, "air tourism." People would pay pilots money -- a fair amount of money, in fact, by the standards of the time, though not as much as the space-tourism outfits are talking about charging, even adjusted for inflation -- just to get in a plane and ride around for a very short while. Those planes were rickety, dangerous contraptions, and tourists could and did get killed. No doubt most people who observed this were saying, as you did, "I'll just save my money and stay on the ground, where I belong, thanks very much." But there were those who wanted to experience it for themselves, and they probably contributed enough money to help the advancement of aviation as a whole significantly.