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Virgin Galactic Unveils SpaceShipTwo
BoulderDad writes, "Richard Branson presented a mock-up of the new SpaceShipTwo in New York. From the article: 'Future passengers aboard Virgin Galactic spaceliners can look forward to cushioned reclining seats and lots of windows during suborbital flights aboard SpaceShipTwo, a concept interior of which was unveiled by British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson Thursday.' The video is worth watching; the spaceport details are more concept than reality, but the depiction of the phases of space flight is very good."
I get the shotgun seat!
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
For an initial ticket price of $200,000, Virgin Galactic passengers will buy a 2.5-hour flight aboard SpaceShipTwo and launch from an altitude of about 60,000 feet (18,288 meters), while buckled safely in seats that recline flat after reaching suborbital space.
:)
Ahh suborbital relaxation. Do I get a glass of Veuve with that as well?
Tell me this thing doesn't put you in mind of a big cartoon dog.
Space ships for a few high-flying thrill seeking, rich tourists, from the man who just pledged 3 Billion $ to reduce jet emissions and fight global warming? How much more junk will these rockets put in the atmosphere? Maybe he's just following up his good karma with the balancing karma?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Where's the overhead bin space? I'm gonna have to board early to find space for my rollerboard!
"If you're going to build a spaceship, you've got to build a green spaceship," Branson said, adding that the carbon dioxide output from a single spaceflight is on par with those of a business class seat aboard commercial aircraft.
this sig deleted by another sig
from the article, which you should have read:
Whitehorn and Branson both said that SpaceShipTwo will rely on a new type of hybrid rocket fuel, one slightly different from the rubber and nitrous oxide mixture that propelled SpaceShipOne into suborbital space three times in 2004.
"If you're going to build a spaceship, you've got to build a green spaceship," Branson said, adding that the carbon dioxide output from a single spaceflight is on par with those of a business class seat aboard commercial aircraft.
Whether that is good enough for you, I don't know. I find that to be acceptable.
Its one thing to get to some altitude, and back.
But when will private industry make it into orbit and back.
You need that if you want to stay for more then free fall.
Its the speed of orbit, and reentry from that speed, that makes this hard.
A real space tourist will want to stay a while.
As for several minutes of weightlessness, you can get
that from conventional aircraft.
Was anyone else hoping for some sort of torpedos?
To afford this. Obviously.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I wonder how this fits in with his recent announcement to fight global warming.
Passengers will have several minutes of weightlessness during the spaceflight, and then have about 40 seconds to return to their seats
200K for "several minutes" in space? Sorry, I'll wait until 2010 for Bigelow's space hotel.
Flying up to 60,000 ft then riding a rocket spewing nitrogen oxides and carbon/sulfur soot-laced exhaust is not going to pollute more than a ride in a Gulfstream IV? Branson is like most executives today who find it useful to pander to environmentalists. He is lying through his teeth. The early passengers will be in enormous danger if Spaceship I flights are any indication. I wish them well, but I would not be surprised if they lost a ship early on.
an ill wind that blows no good
So soon?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
From TFA
"If you're going to build a spaceship, you've got to build a green spaceship," Branson said, adding that the carbon dioxide output from a single spaceflight is on par with those of a business class seat aboard commercial aircraft.
So we're now in the business of believing everything he says rather than doing the simple math ourselves? No wonder he's a billionaire and we're just pottering around until our pensions.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Somewhere in the bowels of Cheyenne Mountain, a secret government project is getting ready to launch GateShip One.
I aggree with you, the View will be the selling point.
I almost did not put that last line in there.
What I would like to see is a space elevator.
And people are working on that as well.
No, with my luck GP will actually be the guy who won the X Prize.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Galactic Virgins, found most notably in parents basements and Star Trek conventions nation-wide.
So we're finally penetrating into the space tourism market, and we're doing it with a company called Virgin.
Support the FairTax
I really think they could have made that movie a bit better by throwing a few more lens flares in there.
My question is, what kind of market is there for this? Suborbital flight doesn't give enough time for experimentation, and who is going to pay 200k a crack for something you could just as easily do by going skydiving ten times and then hiking over to the imax? Heck of a lot cheaper...
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
I would bet that they are developing a special version of spaceship 2( spaceship 2c?) that will operate a bit like the shuttle. That is it will have a cargo area were it can launch a smaller rocket for sending into LEO or higher. This will allow virgin to participate in sending small quick payloads into orbit (perhaps a small spy sat?).
Beyond that, I am curious to see the whiteknight 2. I would also guess that it will be big enough to launch SS3.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
-S
The 1st zero-G porno is gonna rake it in.
Somehow I doubt Burt Rutan or Mike Melville would take the name "bobs666" especially considering how professional their posts to aviation mailing lists have been over the years.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
You'll know that space travel has really come of age when the boarding line contains twenty backpack wearing Aussies on walkabout.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Since it seems the ravening hordes have slagged Space.com's servers, I permission from Popular Science to post a link to their SpaceShipTwo story on the Popular Science website.
Just realized that the lack of photos on Slashdot is something that is missing from Slashdot. I wish I could retake that survey.
And, yes, I was here the day or so that Slashdot's allowance of the IMG tag was exploited back in the day. I still regret scrolling past the mug shot of Bill Gates and seeing...well, what shouldn't be seen. Brain bleach. It doesn't work.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
The walk-before-run philosophy doesn't make sense to me when it comes to hard science and technology. You don't need to reinvent the wheel to invent the axle. I see no difference between Burt Rutan building a primitive, fragile stratosphere-plane and the Chinese putting a man into orbit. It's work duplication. Instead of standing on the shoulders of giants, people are building wax wings.
Hopefully, I can take my PowerBook on this ship. I really hope he didn't ban all Apple batteries for these flights.
Five years from now: "Virgin Galactic Unveils SpaceShipTwo 2 Duo II Zwei Deux!"
IMPEACH XENU
Oops, my bad, I guess you can
http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/gb/frequentflyer /fcpartners/virgingroup/virgingalactic.jsp
--- SER
Funny thing is, that it is things like this that lead to innovations that help our society. Afterall, it is jobs that are needed. As to being a go-cart for the rich and famous, well, it will lead to a go-cart for the upper class, followed by go-carts for the middle class, while the rich and famous will go to the moon followed by rides for the upper class, followed by .....
All in all, when jobs start here, they will be high paying jobs, not McDonald/Walmart jobs. This combined with Bigelow will lead America and the world into some interesting times.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Um, they totally lost me when they said "Stored compressed air that powers air compressors".
Buoyant flight? Sure. Advanced airship designs? Absolutely. Fuel-less flight? Well, if you've got some sort of magic fuel-less air compressor that can power air compressors, sure.
People aren't starving because there's not enough food. People are starving because their governments find it expedient to have them starve. I agree that that's a problem to be solved, but the solution is not a pretty one.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I agree that far too little is done about global hunger and poverty. The socialist in me thinks rich countries should find ways to help people so they don't suffer. However...
When was the last time you went out to eat?
Have you ever spent $20 on a good meal? $40? $100?
If so, for the price of your one meal, dozens of hungry people could have been fed. Using your logic, I'd say everyone should only eat the least expensive foods they can get their hands on, never have any entertainment expenses (you don't buy games, do you?) and give all of their non-necessity income to the poor.
Somehow, I don't think you're doing that. And you shouldn't.
There aren't many good answers for getting around the system and feeding the world's hungry, but "rich people shouldn't spend their money on things they want to buy" is at the bottom of the barrel. Unless you're willing to make the same sacrifices in your everyday life, I wouldn't expect others to - it's really just a drop in the bucket either way.
None of the money spent on this is money that would have went towards the problems you mention. This is private money, not a government handout. You can't expect big businesses to care about poor people. But I guess maybe that's one of the things wrong with this world.
So let's see your equations, then.
Yeah, like cars. Devil-machines that are a danger to hardworking folks like you and me. Not as good at handling rough terrain as ol' Betsy (cue horse whinny) here, not as fast. Just "go-carts" for the rich.
Throwing money at the sort of developing money you suggest is going to have little to no impact in the long run (if the development of infrastructure will end up paying dividends, investments will come and it will develop anyway), and little in the short term. What THIS is is potentially opening up a future development of human technology. Or not. That's the gamble.
Besides, it's his money, he gets to spend it on what he thinks is valuable, which may or may not coincide with what you think is valuable.
The linked article only shows the photos of a mockup of SS2's interior. The coverage over at Gizmodo includes some images from Virgin Galactic which show the conceptual design for the exterior of SpaceShipTwo:
e s-of-virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwo-cabin-203802.php
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/first-imag
One of the images compares the size of SpaceShipTwo to other vehicles, such as SpaceShipOne, the Bell X-1, and a Boeing 747.
Space ships for a few high-flying thrill seeking, rich tourists, from the man who just pledged 3 Billion $ to reduce jet emissions [innovateforum.com] and fight global warming? How much more junk will these rockets put in the atmosphere? Maybe he's just following up his good karma with the balancing karma?
Per the article:
Falcon"the carbon dioxide output from a single spaceflight is on par with those of a business class seat aboard commercial aircraft."
Should there be a Law?
That's only partially true with the governments/food deal. There are a lot of places with legitimate and many years running drought or near drought which has made food growing near impossible, and the people so poor they simply can't afford to buy any, or any aid delivered is very minimal and sometimes gets hijacked. It's an "all of the above" type problem, not just the political angle.
We are lucky we are rich in the US generally speaking and can afford to import more, and have such a large nation that droughts or floods in one area still leave other areas able to produce food, but right now quite a few farmers are hurting pretty bad from the current drought,and some ranchers are having to sell their whole herds- no feed-no water-no hay- and some farmers are not getting much in the way of a grains or vegetables crop. Here
http://drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html
It's been pretty severe, I know it affected us somewhat here this summer, our hay crop dropped to around 1/5th of what it should be.
Two years (sometimes just one totally borked year) back to back like that usually results in complete bankruptcy for them the way our economic system is set up now. The poor third world guys don't even come close to the infrastructure backup that we enjoy here, politics or not, it just doesn't exist.
An intermediate step would be suborbital transcontinental flight. Imagine traveling between EU and US via something like this. You'd get the 1 hour ride to 50,000 feet and then a short (long compared to this) rocket ride across the ocean, followed by a glide into the local spaceport.
More like they latch this bugger onto a jet, take off with it and then launch the space ship from it. Can't say that sounds as efficient an ordinary old business class jet.
From the article:
FalconThe WhiteKnightTwo will also rely on new, cleaner-burning jet engines
Should there be a Law?
since it's common for people to loose their lunch when they enter weightlessness. Branson should spend some money on inventing a new barf bag to go with his space plane.
GNUs don't kill people.
The fact that people are dying everday worldwide from "easily" preventable circumstances, and lack of food makes me question the value of this to just go up and down on the world's most expensive rollercoaster.
Two problems with the "lack of food", one is that there isn't really a problem with lack of food, it just doesn't get to where it's needed and because of politics food isn't produced where it used to be grown. Those "illegal immigrants" people in the US complain about, many of the Mexicans were farmers who were able to grow enough food to feed their families as well as sale. But because of NAFTA big agrobusinesses in the US are able to sale corn in Mexico at a price lower than it costs to grow, agrobusinesses are subsidized by the US government to the tune of billions of dollars a year. And because Mexican farmers can't compeat they are forced off thier farms. Or take Zimbabwe in southern Africa. Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket of southern Africa, up until Mugabe became president. He forced many farmers, many of whom were white, off thier land and then gave the farms to his cronies who didn't know anything about farming so now the land lays fallow, uncultivated. Whereas before there was plenty of food now there are people starving in Zimbabwe.
Simply governmental policies drive people who can grow food off of the land.
We need sustainable long term development of Infrastructure for all of humanity
I agree but that doesn't mean we can't do both, improve infrastructure and commercial technology. Heck, Branson is spending billions on developing alternative fuels which can help sustainable development, not only can it help the environment but it can also lead to new sources of income for many.
FalconShould there be a Law?
What is with "SpaceShipOne", "SpaceShipTwo"? Reminds me of an ancient joke about a programmer who was told to drop undescriptive variable names like "i" or "j", so he adopted variable names like "descriptive_enumerator_1", "descriptive_variable_name_2".
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
It's a ship that goes through the gate.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Great where can I get a ride on one - oh, only if I am one of a handful of jet pilots in the Air force or government space program.
Sure there is - because it can and will be completed within the next decade, unlike the private man-to-orbit projects under way. It will also likely be much more affordable than the orbital trips, even when they do come to fruition. Bungee jumping will never scale to orbital velocities, but that does not make it worthless.
Yeah, and damn that rafting company who scammed me out of $50 by providing a desired service in exchange for a mutually agreed upon sum. Dirty Capitalists.
That was the whole point of the X-prize. It was never intended to go towards orbit, and the hope was that it would lead to a commercial venture. The people who provided the money for the X-prize don't feel cheated, and are very happy about Branson's deal with Rutan to develop it into profitable business.
Oh, and you people bitching about the environmental impact need to get some perspective. There are thousands of flights across the world every day, and millions of vehicles being driven and thousands of coal plants spewing CO2 and soot. And you are worried about the pollution that one sub-orbital launch a week is going to do.
Seriously, I am used to people on slashdot being critical jerks, but this thread is ridiculous. Rutan is an excellent high-performance plane designer, and rather than sitting around bitching about how he wished there were private alternatives to get into space, he took what knew and did something about it. In just a few more years he will be providing an opportunity to people that has never existed before, and which no one will match for many more years to come. You may not think it is worth the price, but thousands of other people do, and are more than willing to pay the $250,000 to get a glimpse of space. Sure I would prefer to see an orbital trip. But I will always be far more excited to see concrete progress in the present, no matter how small, than I will be to dream about vaporware.
"If you're going to build a spaceship, you've got to build a green spaceship," Branson said, adding that the carbon dioxide output from a single spaceflight is on par with those of a business class seat aboard commercial aircraft.
Wow, that's a great CO2 budget. But what about methane?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
... some people will definitely want more. And companies will be way more willing to invest once the business model is proven.
If people will gladly pay out the wazoo for this, I really need to go in with some investors and buy an airliner to run as a chartered "vomit comet." Passengers would pay a lot less than flying Rutan Air, and experience a heck of a lot more than seven minutes of weightlessness.
I guess it wouldn't have the same cache, for idiots who don't know what it means to be in space, in orbit, etc, as a "spaceflight."
..can you grab a snow dome for my niece? there's bound to be a gift shop?
I love that line of reasoning. Allow me to summarise:
1. Not doing something which could prevent a death is just as bad as doing something which causes a death.
2. Giving just $1 (or something equally trivial) to person X will prevent their death.
3. Therefore any time you spend even $1 more for some random item you're contributing to person X's death.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Oh yeah.. I forgot:
4. Therefore you might as well just kill people at random, because you are anyway.
Which, of course, is an illogical conclusion, therefore proving, by contradiction, that helping others is pointless.
How we know is more important than what we know.
(And yes, of course, this little hop is nowhere near the same thing as actually visiting the Space Station, but it is technically "going into space".)
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
makes me question the value of this
Ok, I never said it isn't his "right" to piss it away how he sees fit.
I just said it could be used in other ways more beneficial to people
who are in need of help, and are not panhandlers.
Real people with real problems.
But on here, I get modded flamebait because I question the expenditure
of millions long term, on something that is literally a quick up and down ride.
Just because it is some cool techie rocket ride.
As for when is the last $20 meal I had, I'd say it was over a year ago,
and to be honest I don't even remember it.
$40 or $100 for food...I can honestly say never in my life.
And further more, I am relating a thrill ride's "value" to that of the
deaths of thousands.
To me it is amazing so many people responded so vehemently saying
"screw the poor, we want rocket rides for the rich!"
You will see where this kind of attitude takes the world over
the next few decades, I think the path is already well laid out.
It has happened before...Read your history.
Decadence is timeless.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
No, since killing more people is even worse.
The chain of reasoning up to point 3 is logical, just unpleasant since it disturbs consumeristic hedonism. Point 4 is wrong, as I stated above. But even if it was all illogical, it wouldn't prove that "helping others is pointless", because "don't lift a finger to help anyone" and "give every last penny to the poor" aren't the only alternatives. Proof by contradiction only works if there's no third alternative, which there is - give some, but not all, of your money to the poor, or go to sites like Hungersite which are ad-funded and give some of the money to the poor.
The question is: were you trying to be sarcastic or are you one of those people who keep on claiming that altruism is evil - Rayndists, or whatever they were called ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The same kind of people who can afford it. If the cost of a flight is not a biggie to you, it doesn't matter that it's a biggie to someone else. You already have a mansion (or ten, around the world), a personal helicopter (and pilot) (and jet), a garage full of sports cars, other expensive hobbies (like casino gambling, formula-1 racing, etc...); and so on. These kind of people exist. Virgin Galactic could have increased their prizes ten-fold, or hundred-fold, and they would still have customers.
Yet, the price isn't that high. It is actually only $200000, which means even I can afford it! All I've got to do is sell my house, and I'm space-born! Of course, after the flight, I still need a place to live, but hey, that's exactly where I (and most other people) started when moving out of home for the first time. Thus, the potential customers for this kind of flight even includes typical middle-aged middle-class people, with abnormal high enthusiasm for space-flights.
I can't wait to join the "62.5 Mile High Club".
I went to the NEXTFEST today to see SpaceShipTwo in person. Check out my videoblog post here.