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British Man Trades Frequent Flyer Miles for Space Shot
lvmoon writes "Start saving up your airline miles. Alan Watts, a British businessman, was able to use his 2,000,000 frequent flyer miles for a space flight, a ticket aboard a 2009 Virgin Galactic space flight." From the article: "Electrician Alan Watts said he flew to and from the United States on Virgin Atlantic flights more than 40 times in the past six years, earning him enough miles to take the trip into space with Virgin's space wing, London's The Sun newspaper reported Friday. The trip cost 2 million frequent flier miles, compared to the 90,000 miles required for a first-class flight from London to New York." Besides being funny, does this say anything about space travel in the 21st century? Is space is no longer the final frontier? I'm pretty sure Roddenberry didn't have frequent flier miles in mind when he came up with the Enterprise.
Now, instead of making fun of his name, his parents, his loong nose and cribbing about Virgin, let us behave like adults and congratulate him for being the first tourist to exchange miles for space. (literally).
Way to go Watts !
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
This story is from "The Sun".
That newspaper is the lowest of the low, the gutter press. Their normal faire consists of entirely fabricated stories and their conduct is entirely unethical. Do not place ANY credence to stories printed in this paper.
The Hubbert peak. The end of the era of cheap energy. Oil won't run out, it'll just get more and more expensive to produce, taking up a larger and larger proportion of the economy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
There will have to be something very valuable in space to justify the energy required to get there. Probably the military domination required to ensure access to the remaining oil supplies. The Outer Space Treaty? Not worth the paper it's written on.
Deleted
I must add my view that for something like this, we really should leave it to the professionals before we are sure of what can and can't be done on commercial levels.
Its hard to get professionals to do that if they're all stuck doing things at governmental levels.
Besides, the comparison to Columbia is completely inapt. The shuttles' method of delivery has been compared to stacking TNT to the height of a street lamp pole just to launch a nut into space.
The Virgin method is much closer to traditional aviation, which is a mature science with a much larger industry which has a large amount of experience in doing what they do. Ok, so they're sticking a rocket motor on what pretty much amounts to an aircraft, but at least it doesn't need fuel tanks which weigh multiple amounts as much as the craft.
Minerals? -- space has more than one can imagine
Space.... has SPACE -- using automated robots and orbiting factories to process raw minerals we will construct floating cities that will rival the best on earth
Why did Europeans colonise the Americas? I mean, look at the expense! :rolls eyes:
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
Space travel is a temporary situation. It will cost too much and become unfeasible in the next 50 - 100 years.
You have that back to front. The current difficulty of doing space travel is temporary, because it is the result of poor strength of materials and poor energy usage.
Materials technology is improving at an extraordinary pace, and there is now a whole industry dedicated to manufacturing nanotubes of one form or another, despite this being only the beginning of work on nanoscale materials. Much greater things are on the way. And with stronger, lighter materials you can build much better space-worthy craft, not only hugely safer in the hostile medium but also able to withstand greater dynamic forces more safely. And more cheaply!
Then we come to energy. Contrary to the daily propaganda of environmentalists, there is no shortage of energy on the planet --- the surface of the Earth receives about 150 thousand times more energy from the sun than mankind is forecast to need by the year 2020. Our "energy problems" simply reflect our poor ability to harness that near-zero-cost energy, currently.
But that can change, especially in the context of space flight.
For a start, we can rise up through the bulk of the atmosphere almost without any energy cost at all, and many outfits are already experimenting with that, to the very edge of space.
And secondly, once up there, solar energy is freely available, and as long as there is still residual atmosphere around you, this gives you matter which you can use for propulsion, slowly building up speed as you skip through the upper layers. A relatively small amount of extra reaction mass is needed to boost the orbit out the final few dozen miles once you have close to orbital speed.
In due course then, on materials and energy grounds there is every reason to forecast a very bright and buoyant future for space travel. NASA-type costs are not required, as long as you're not in a hurry.
I disagree. Once a mile is spent, it ceases to circulate in the system.
Similarly, miles are created only when money is spent on a ticket, roughly on scale with the value of the ticket. One would expect that the price of the ticket includes a profit margin that can be applied towards any miles which are redeemed.
Further, the cost of goods sold (at least for profitable companies) is lower than the price. Although the profit margin for airfares is low, many airfare rewards programs (and pretty much all non-airfare rewards programs) have a very wide array of lower-price consumer goods which can be redeemed. These things are produced for pennies on the dollar.
Lastly, for rewards programs such as the "Air Miles" rewards programs and store rewards cards, every item you purchase can be tracked to your account. Maybe this should have been posted on YRO instead.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Don't be pessimistic. The use of frequent flier miles to get a ticket into space means that spaceflight is finally here in a real sense. It's not just for governments anymore.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Branson is a master publicist.
I bet he asked his airline team 'who has the most airmiles?' and set the tarrif at that price point.