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Virgin Galactic Shows the Finished WhiteKnight Two
Klaus Schmidt writes "Virgin Galactic today unveiled their WhiteKnight Two mothership, called 'EVE.' It is designed to carry the smaller SpaceShip Two into space.
The rollout represents another major milestone in Virgin Galactic's quest to launch the world's first private, environmentally benign, space access system for people, payload and science.
Christened 'EVE' in honor of Richard Branson's mother — Sir Richard performed the official naming ceremony — WK2 is both visually remarkable and represents ground-breaking aerospace technology. It is the world's largest all carbon composite aircraft and many of its component parts have been built using composite materials for the very first time. At 140 ft, the wing span is the longest single carbon composite aviation component ever manufactured."
We can use all of these.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In his novel Firestar , the first volume of a future history attempting to be a realistic vision of the rise of human spaceflight, Michael Flynn had FedEx as one a major sponsor of private launches. Being able to deliver a package anywhere on Earth in 90 minutes, Flynn thought, would be an incredible advantage to a courier firm. With the rise of the Internet, however, there are ever fewer physical packages to be transported, and maybe no company would be willing to pay thousands extra for just a few hours less of delivery time. Now, except for space tourism, I'm hard-pressed to find any commercial use for mere orbital flights (as opposed to getting out there and mining).
my experience is that since the rise of the internet, shipping has gone UP, significantly. While people don't fedex or UPS documents too much anymore, the truth is they were faxing them years before the internet showed up as a major player anyway. However, when people can now use the internet to not only find out your company on the other end of the earth exists, but that you make the funky product they were just wondering about. On top of all this, they can also place an order directly with you to get your bizarre niche product...your business, and shipping increases tenfold.
Mind you, I am not an expert, and I freely admit I may be wrong about this, but this is what it has been in my experience.
How many people use amazon instead of going the the store nowadays?
... in the long term, the faster we get viable colonies off this rock, the less impact we'll have as a species on our home planet.
That's seriously long-term. The only ways I can see space exploration resulting in less use of earth-based resources is if:
A. We develop a way to ship off significant amounts of people to colonies. Considering how fast humans reproduce, this is not likely any time soon at all. Colonies will not be a solution to population growth.
OR
B. Space-based resources (minerals, energy would be the primary candidates, I guess) become cheaper than terrestrial ones. Again, I don't see this happening any time soon. Depends on how scarce resources become on Earth, of course. Even if space mining etc. were to become commercially viable, there's no guarantee the infrastructure required to launch and operate heavy machinery in space wouldn't come at a hefty environmental cost on Earth.
I don't think the other planets really want us either. I can envision there being life on Mars but just hiding every time we go there kind of like not answering the door when the annoying neighbor knocks on it.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
"We develop a way to ship off significant amounts of people to colonies. Considering how fast humans reproduce, this is not likely any time soon at all. Colonies will not be a solution to population growth."
Colonies don't relieve population pressure by removing people from the populace; colonies remove people from the FUTURE populace by selectively attracting those more likely to reproduce - risk takers and the lower classes, looking for a better life. I would contend that that is why Europe's birth rate is so low - they shipped off all of the baby-makers to the US.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Thousands of people fly every day, miles above the Earth, propelled by a controlled explosion In a machine with a whole lot of moving parts supplied by the lowest bidder. Most people in that situation get a $5, single-strap safety restraint. Even the pilots and crew don't get an $800 restraint system.
I'm not saying space travel is easy, but in real life there's usually some reasonable compromise between "the most safety we can provide at any cost" and "the most safety we can provide at a reasonable cost, considering the inherent risk of this situation". But it doesn't surprise me that you've lost sight of that -- many people have these days.