Space Tourism, Now and to Come

bart_scriv writes, "BusinessWeek looks at the latest in space tourism, from a $20 million Soyuz trip to a $200,000 ride via Virgin Galactic. The article looks at existing and planned opportunities, with a slide show of photos and artist's conceptions of vehicles and facilities. From the article: 'Among the other wonders of space is the planned Bigelow Aerospace space hotel. Similar in design to the International Space Station (which has kept a constant human presence in space since 2000), the hotel has a modular design that will allow it easily to expand. The key difference is that the hotel's modules will be inflatable. Bigelow Aerospace launched the Genesis I test module into orbit on July, 2006, and plans to send Genesis II in early 2007.'"

Comments

Inflatable != fragile

[FleaPlus]

Every time there's an article about Bigelow Aerospace here, there's a dozen or so commenters who are convinced that because the modules are self-expanding, they must therefore be delicate and vulnerable to space debris. In reality however, the walls of their modules are quite durable, probably even more so the aluminum walls of the International Space Station. The walls will be composed of multiple layers of materials like kevlar (the stuff used in bullet-proof vests) and vectran, resulting in a wall 16-inches thick. They've done a number of projectile tests, with results which compare favorably to NASA's.

Re:Inflatable != fragile

[FleaPlus]

As the anon coward said, by "NASA's technology" I was referring to aluminum walls, not NASA's technology in general (which includes Transhab). It's really too bad that Congress forced NASA to abandon Transhab, as it could've helped them to construct the International Space Station at a much lower cost, and probably with a larger size.

For any readers who might be unfamiliar with Transhab, there's a rather nice history of the project, and its further development by Bigelow:

A History of the Genesis I Private Space Module

Re:How High is Space?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't Earth's escape velocity constant, regardless of how far you travel to escape it?

Escape velocity is irrelevant; what you care about is orbital velocity, or rather, the delta-v (change in velocity) necessary to reach orbital velocity. The delta-v certainly does depend on your location, since both your gravitational potential energy and your kinetic energy due to the Earth's rotation vary with location and altitude.

Re:How High is Space?

[paladinwannabe2]

No, escape velocity is dependent on distance from the Earth. Remember that gravity gets weaker the further you are away from its source. It is slightly easier to escape from the equator than it is at the pole, so you are right that the Andes would be one of the best places to put a space elevator (or just a launch pad).

Re:The first thing that comes to mind is regulatio

[badboy_tw2002]

There's a whole existing body of law around this - Oceanic law, naval law, whatever you call it. No one owns the ocean, and yet ships are represented by their respective countries, do business, have environmental impacts (oil spills come to mind) etc. Whats to stop private cruise ship companies from gouging the consumer? Fair market I guess, plus whatever regulating body the terrestrial company is owned by. And this thing will really get off the ground once Virgin, Amidillo, etc start getting craft into orbit. It will be a while, but once we get people into orbit using commercial vehicles then the government (and taxpayers) don't have to foot the bill.

Re:More junk to monitor

[J05H]

Actually, I would buy a 5 ton ball of shit in orbit. Someday I want to grow trees in space, and that would make for some cheap fertilizer. Rednecks in Spaaaaaace!!

On Grandparent post - every rocket launched and payload developed has specific debris-mitigation efforts. US commercial payloads must pass through AST's debris process. Debris is an issue, but it's a small step compared to regenerative life support or deep space radiation issues.

Josh