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.

Comments

Hyperinflation in the Airmiles currency

[Ckwop]

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

Re:Hyperinflation in the Airmiles currency

[tgd]

An interesting theory... however, twelve years ago I was investigating various ways of doing product promotions and had looked quite a bit at frequent flyer promotions. At the time I could buy frequent flyer miles at eight cents a piece (with substantial discounts for VERY large purchases), and generally they applied towards tickets in the ten cent per mile price. (25,000 frequent flier miles for a round trip ticket of approximately $2500 peak value -- the average seat cost being based on the highest available fare for that seat type)

At two million frequent flier miles for a $200k ticket, they gave him ten cents value a piece today, as well. I haven't looked, but I would guess the cost to buy miles hasn't changed either (or even kept pace with inflation). What has changed is discount airlines pulling prices down, so the disconnect between the price you're "paying" for FF miles and the vlaue you get back isn't as good since its trivial to find non-peak price seats on flights.

"The Sun" is British gutter press

[Toby The Economist]

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.

Re:"The Sun" is British gutter press

[eipgam]

Reminds me of a quote from "Yes, (Prime) Minister":

Jim Hacker: The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country. The Times is read by people who actually do run the country. The Daily Mirror is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who own the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country. The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about people who read the Sun.

Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country as long as she's got big tits.

Re:Well

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

What worries me more is about their preparations for the journey, astronauts spend years preparing to go into space and now it is being treated like a long-haul flight for some, I'm sure they will have some training but are they sure it is enough for the kind of forces that their body is going to experience while taking off?

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.

Re:Well

[LS]

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.

Re:Well

[MyLongNickName]

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!

Exact opposite is true: a great future in space

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Don't be so pessimistic

[Ignorant Aardvark]

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.