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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.'"
am excited to be travelling through space in a large inflatable ball... what could go wrong?
To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion...
Of course, my friend asked me, "Are you worried about the rocket blowing up?"
"Not really," I said. "After all, when I kick-it I plan on having my ashes and a sample of my DNA shot into space anyhow. As long as the rocket makes it to space first, I think it would actually be a pretty good deal."
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
Call me when they put a huge, inflatable arena in space, and start holding athletic events there. Somewhere between Ender's Game and Jocks In Space there's got to be a sweet spot of entertainment...
As if there wasn't enough junk to try to monitor in space and worry about falling to earth, now we're going to have private enterprise try to make a buck or two off of going to space.
Government contractors worry me enough, but what happens to a space hotel when the business runs out of money? I can see this going through a boom and bust cycle like just about every new business, and I want to know. It's not like running lots of fiber optic cable and then going bankrupt. Who's going to take care of the degrading orbit of the hotel?
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
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.
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.
WMV or MPG video just posted by John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace's test hover.
Seastead this.
"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
Zero. G. Porn.
:-)
...and I don't even want to think about what would happen to the instruments if they tried zero-G Bukkake :-(
There's your 21st centure business model
Although, cleaning up afterwards would be a challenge...
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
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.
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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.
Actually, forget the blackjack.
Damn right. Back in my day, we had to walk to the moon! Uphill! Both ways! :^)
(sorry. couldn't resist.
Thank you,
Bigelow Aerospace Management
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Are there any salvage laws yet? What is "abandoned" in space? Everything up there was at one point pretty darn valuable, just from the sheer launching costs let alone any tech it represents.
I would imagine that once private industry is up there all the time, that "space junk" will become a valuable resource and won't be allowed to just de orbit and burn up. They'll do something with it.