Slashdot Mirror
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.
He's lucky too because he's got this free ticket in before the much expected hyperinflation in the air-miles currency.
This surprises some people but in fact, air-miles are a form of currency. They can be exchanged for real world goods and services and therefore have an intrinsic real world value. The problem is that the vast majority of air-miles go unspent. Since a constantly increasing amount of currency is chasing a limited amount of goods the value of the currency is constantly falling.
The fact that this guy was able to accrue two million air-miles doing a normal job tells you that inflation has already crippled the currency. I soon expect air-miles to be practically worthless.
Simon
2M miles? 40 trips? US->UK? WTF?
Considering a circumnavigation of the equator is only 25k miles and London->Los Angeles is only about 5500 miles, it would take a LAX-LHR round-trip every two weeks without fail for six years to truly earn all that in real air miles. Obviously dude got most of that mileage by racking up credit-card miles as no sane person, regardless of business requirement, would keep up a travel schedule that ridiculous for that long without a break.
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
A) They won't be going to space in the sense that astronauts (and especially some cosmonauts) have been. It's just a few minutes of staying at a considerable height...
B) The virgin spaceship is not a rocket. Takeoff should not be a bad experience.
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.
Yes, but as has been said before by many Slashdot posters, getting to the edge of space and getting into orbit are as different as driving to the store and flying across the country. The Virgin craft will not get into orbit, and is thus useless for any sustained space flight or delivery. You are comparing apples and oranges sir. There is currently no other way to get a nut into orbit other than stacking TNT to the height of a street lamp.
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
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:
Its cool and all but these are suborbital flights I don't know about you but when I first think of space flight I think of being in space for a hell of a lot more than a few minutes. Its a great first step but sounds more like an extended amusement park ride than actual tourism to me its as if you were to go on a cruise to the Caymans, they dropped you off on the coast for 5 minutes then you had to get back on and leave. If anything I am just happy that all these wealthy people are paying the first adopter fee so the rest of us can one day get a real space flight a lot cheaper, a lot longer, and probably a hell of a lot better.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
he second is pure ego, and may get a blowjob or two,
Dude. If you think this is any less reason to go to space than the other three, you are nuts!
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
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.
Switch to nuclear and run vechiles with hydrogen, batteries or vegetable oil. The anti-nuclear morons will complain, but they will anyway no matter what you do. Or drill a deep hole in the ground, drop some water there and watch geothermal heat turn it to steam. Or build tidal or wave harnesses in coastal regions to harness said water motions. And so on.
The whole peak oil hysteria is caused because we humans are lazy and haven't bothered improving our energy production technology significantly in a century or so. Maybe it will give the long-needed kick in the rear to start making rational, rather than just money-making, choices in energy policy.
How about endless amount of sunlight that can be harnessed and beamed back to Earth or used to power factories in orbit or in Moon) ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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
It's terrific and way beyond cool. As a former frequent flier, I'm thrilled that somebody has actually gotten something useful for their frequent flier miles besides more travel. Let's be real here. After the first couple of flights, the glamour of frequent travel wears off.
The last thing you want after spending 50 weeks a year out of town is to be more out of town. No matter how cool the place that you are going to is. Midnight flights, the disruption of your home life, the fact you don't actually get paid for having your butt on a plane, only for being there...
Richard Branson has scored a marketing coup with the translation of air flight miles to a space flight chance of a lifetime. Bravo to him, and to the people who step up and take it.
I wonder what 12 million pepsi points would get.
Have you read my journal today?