Slashdot Mirror
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."
...the MOON is out there!
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?
It's really about time that a suborbital travel in space becomes "engineering challenge" rather than "explorations".
It's never easy; but it should no longer be impossible for a private entity to venture into a suborbital flight business.
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.
http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/379/16640_a erospace.html
...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.
Beauty is just a light switch away.
Just saw the "2.0" and assumed AJAX is somehow involved.
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
YES!
For instance, hardened ceramic roofs, bomb shelters, "incoming meteor" early warning systems, and the like.
Pretty much all the technologies that make it possible to survive the fledgling space-ships disintegrating in the outer atmosphere, left and right. Pretty much all the same things you'd want if "flying cars" or "jet packs" for the average person became a reality.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
OK, it's news for nerds, but this is even too nerdy for me. The pain! The agony! Please stop giving version numbers to real life stuff. Real life is not CVS, thank you. I don't call my second wife Wife 2.0 either, neither do I refer to McDonald's latest offering as 0.9 beta. Snap out of it!
Space Adventures isn't a "new" start-up to compete with Virgin Galactic. Space Adventures has been around since 1998, and was one of the first companies (in the modern era, anyway; not talking about old space sweepstakes from decades ago) to actually plan on sending tourists into space. It is Virgin Galactic that is the "new" start-up, competeing with the likes of Space Adventures.
That having been said, right now Space Adventures is little more than a middle man. They've been working with various other private companies (like Scaled Composites, SpaceX, Armadillo, etc.) to essentially use whatever suborbital rocket THEY build, to ferry passangers who reserve flights now with Space Adventures. Right now there are a few hundred people who've plunked down $100,000 or so for a reservation; I assume Space Adventures is just making money off of investments while waiting for a private company to finally actually produce a sub-orbital ship.
I should also point out the Space Adventures has been "anticipating" this first flight to take place as early as 2000, and have delayed it every year since then. Who knows if any spacecraft maker will ever actually complete a project such that Space Adventures reservations get filled. Virgin Galactic, on the other hand, has already locked up a deal with Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, so it would seem unlikely that SpaceShipTwo would be available to take Space Adventures' reservations, unless Virgin Galactic buys out the contracts. And since Burt Rutan is currently the only guy who has demosntrated any success in this field so far, things don't look good for SA.
But that's just my opinion.
Bruce
PS - SA has managed to get a "finder's fee" for hooking up three private space tourists for trips to the ISS via the Russians, for $20M a pop. Frankly, I don't know HOW they managed that; seems to me I can phone up Rosaviacosmos directly. But maybe Russia prefers dealing exclusively through SA for potential private clients.
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.
... 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.
.max
There ain't no breakthroughs to be had! Space flight with rockets is fabu $$$, period. Schmancy IRBMs with inflight entertainment isn't
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.
Why would a civilian go to space?
The ultimate thrill ride?
Certainly not for "tourist" reasons, there's nothing to tour up there.
Kubrick's wheel is not up there and the ISS doesn't have the room or time
to put up with camera wielding geeks.
There's no moon motels or other stop overs up there.
There's just simply no where to go except up, around and back down.
And how long will these "tourists" stay strapped in a chair for their $250,000 ride? 20 minutes? 1 hour? 3 days? Really now.. Think about it.
What's it take to orbit the earth, 90 minutes I think, CMIIW. So maybe you get
to make one orbit and back home. All for a cool quarter mil. Nice..
Will you be allowed to take your own photos or will you be required to leave your
cameras on earth and buy your photos from the gift shop at the launch/landing site?
And lastly, who will plot the course of these ships, through the millions of tons of space debris? NASA? I think NORAD keeps track of ALL space debris and coordinates data with NASA to plot flight paths.
Is NORAD going to allow these private enterprises access to this same data or are they going to "use the force Luke" to navigate the debris fields??
Man, this whole thing about space tourism is just silly. We're a good 50-100 years from any realistic scenario, if at all. Until Kubrick's wheel goes up and until we have civilian Moon motels and civilian Mars motels up there, there's just no good reason for civilians to be in space.
I'll just save my money and stay on the ground, where I belong, thanks very much.
And BTW, I'm a strong supporter of NASA and science and space exploration.
I believe it in 101% all the way. But this civilian stuff is just silly.
After a few civilians get killed this half baked idea will go away very quickly.
You would think that common sense would rule here, what after seeing two shuttles blow up and how many Russians killed in their own problems.
Space travel is extremely dangerous. It's best left to the experts.
We still have a very long way to go before it's perfected.
Whats cool about all this is not that its new (fights like this were first carried out by the North American Aviation X-15 rocket plane launched from a B-52 Bomber) but that its been done by a private company in a way thats easily reproducable and promises to get cheaper over time.
> Let's go for Space Race 3.0!!!
Yeah, agreed. Because so far 2.0 looks pretty lame.
From TFA:
> Both are planning on operating passenger sub-orbital flights.
Until they're doing more than a) planning, and b) better than sub-orbital, this whole thing is just an exercise in venture capitalist handjobs. "Suborbital space travel" ISN'T SPACE TRAVEL. It's a money hole for people with too much money (whether they're potential customers or Richard Branson).
Now, if they were doing REAL space travel (which I define as being further than Earth-orbit or to any body other than Earth - i.e., Moon qualifies), I'd be first in line.
No gods, no demons, and no masters. Secular Humanism!
Tell you something: spinach is *not* a good iron supplier. (The other unkillable myth...)