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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.'"
I don't considering suborbital trips to be space travel, so I'm glad they're talking about some of the real players trying to bring orbital travel to be affordable.
My great fear is that the marketing machines are overselling suborbital "roller coasters", and when that is an abject failure, we'll see less investment in real orbital trips. Orbital is at least an order of magnitude harder than suborbital (if not more), so it's possible that some investors could be spooked away.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
About the same as being in a metal can. In fact, it might be less. It should be self-sealing while the can is not as easy to do that with. In addition, the can makes LARGE amounts of noise and that is causing issues for the astronauts/cosmonauts.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"The site's elevation 4,700 feet above sea level will also make for a shorter trip into space, saving on fuel costs."
Isn't Earth's escape velocity constant, regardless of how far you travel to escape it? I don't see dropping off quicker with only 1 mile "head start" so much of the acceleration to escape velocity is against less weight, with constant mass requiring constant acceleration fuel.
Wouldn't the Equator's 26 miles extra distance from the Earth's center (compared to the distance at the poles) make it an even cheaper launch site?
Even if all these factors count, isn't Ecuador's low lattitude and high altitude the best combination? Forget a space elevator, how about just an escalator up the Andes?
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make install -not war
How do we regulate space? Don't think we won't have to. We can regulate our own air space but with the need for orbits, for there to be regulation at individual country levels, that's alot of stuff in geosychronous orbit.
Who would be the regulating body? If we leave space up to the private sector and traveling by space becomes a viable alternative, what's to stop the private companies from gouging the consumer? I'm sure we could find a way to regulate on an international level through a conglomerate made of a series of coutries with a viable interest. We have another international organization designed to protect a commodity. We call it OPEC and they are the bane of any oil using nation out there...in some people's eyes that is.
Then again, if we think planes and terrorism is bad, just think what would happen with such ships and stations for tourist travel. On top of that, how would all these people get there?
But what environmental impacts would there be? I mean sure, there is a good, viable business model to cash in on people's "pie in the sky" dreams but is it sustainable? What resources would we need to do this effectivly, safely and cleanly. Rocket launches are a dirty affair when it comes to the environment, safety and the checkbook.
This is something that needs more than a business model. I mean, there needs to be a way to show profit for the private sector to be interested so that capital can be raised to fund the project but where are the long term goals and plans? We have been hearing about this stuff for a couple of decades now with promise after promise after promise. When is somebody going to actually look at this with a REAL feasability model instead of some rich dude forking over the cash to hitch a ride on a natonally funded science mission?
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.
They're probably confusing them with these guys.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Nope. A thing is only worth what someone is willing to pay, it's costs are irrelevant. There's no such thing as intrinsic value.
That means you have to start with... What is someone willing to pay for a week in orbit? Then ask how many people can we get into the thing, how long will it last. Then you have an approximate measure of what the ISS might be worth to a space hotel operator.
There are no space hotel operators at the moment and nobody else really knows what to do with the thing, which means that if the ISS were abandoned tomorrow, it would literally be worthless.
Deleted
Actually, forget the blackjack.
To be specific, Bigelow Aerospace bought NASA's TransHab program. Apparently it's all siting out in a warehouse somewhere in Las Vegas. So it's no surprise that their technology compares favorably with NASA's-- it's based on it. (I know this only because I had a long conversation yesterday with a friend who works there, designing their robots and integrating the avionics package.)
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.