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First Flight For SpaceShipTwo
mknewman writes "Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane took to the air for the first time this [Monday] morning from California's Mojave Air and Space Port. The craft, which has been christened the VSS Enterprise, remained firmly attached to its WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane throughout the nearly three-hour test flight. It will take many months of further tests before SpaceShipTwo actually goes into outer space. Nevertheless, today's outing marks an important milestone along a path that could take paying passengers to the final frontier as early as 2011 or 2012."
I spent my honeymoon in Hawaii. I don't think I ever left the hotel room, much less the hotel.
It was enjoyable, but did I really enjoy Hawaii?
"early as 2011 or 2012".
If 2011 is early, doesn't that mean 2012 is not early? Me smells a sales pitch.
... this kind of stuff give me REAL wood.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
How far we've fallen.
It is like one of those time travel conundrums - did we name it Enterprise because we saw the future, or was the future influenced by what we named it here in the present?
So how many people are going to pay $200K to ride in this thing, and then ask for their money back because they spent the flight puking their guts out?
I mean, for the same cash, I could rent a MiG-29 for a couple days and have a hell of a time.
http://www.flyfighterjet.com/
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Me smells a sales pitch.
Yup. Impressive. But still "just" a rich person's toy.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
YouTube link.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I know next to nothing about the aerospace industry (hope someone more knowledgeable will opine), but it seems to me Burt Rutan and his ilk produce these wonderful machines faster, and at lower cost, than the big boys with their big design committees can.
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Where are the canards, btw?
The whole point of funding Columbus was to see if they could open up a new line of trade which would prove very lucrative. It was an investment. If Columbus made it to India, Spain would get back far more than they paid.
Where is the big financial payoff for going into space? If we get to Mars, how is that going to provide a financial windfall for the country that does it?
We don't spend a lot of money on space exploration because the potential ROI is near zero. We should be dumping money into exploring Earth. We know more about space than we do about the depths of our oceans.
Work Safe Porn
Take a deep breath and smell the beautiful vacuum. Can you see it?
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
A much better headline for the article would have been "Virgin spaceship gets its cherry popped".
Let's get this all in perspective. I was born in the mid 1960's.
1960's - humankind put people into space and then put them around and then on the Moon.
1970's - humankind stopped bothering putting them on the Moon, but did put them in high orbit - Skylab
1980's - humankind dumped Skylab into the sea (and Western Australia) but brought in the shuttle
1990's - humankind used the Shuttle to get people into low earth orbit and started to build the International Space Station
2000's - humankind decides to retire Shuttle and considers retiring the ISS
2010's - humankind lifts people to the edge of the atmosphere.
At this rate by the time I'm retired, humankind will have set its sights for the top of the stairs. It may make it - but only if its risk-free.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
The high cost to the human race's colonization of space is caused by the complexity and danger of reaching and leaving escape velocity within the earth's atmosphere.
The Space Shuttle turned out to be an expensive dangerous white elephant, the reason the Shuttle was so expensive is, because of its complexity with millions of different manufactured parts and the requirement to drag the fuel needed to reach escape velocity up from the surface of the earth.
There is another route, we can reach the vacuum of space no problem, Burt Rutan proved this with Space Ship one, when he won the 'X' prize by reaching over 100 km twice in one week.
Yes the Shuttle was 'reusable' but in name only. They could not have turned that around in a week.
One idea could be to create rocket fuel on the moon, with robotic technology operated from earth, there is lots of water on the moon, use solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen which makes very good rocket fuel.
Use the rocket fuel to fuel a space tug, use the space tug to accelerate and decelerate Space Ship Two, to and from escape velocity in the safety of a vacuum.
The moon is the door to the solar system.
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
If only Derek Meddings were alive today. Take a look at that first picture in the linked article (from the underside), and tell me that's not something straight out of Thunderbirds or UFO, or Captian Scarlet...
Anyone who's ever looked at the Mechanical Designs of the Gerry Anderson shows always thought they were elegant, and yet, somehow unpractical or unworkable has now been shown that the design work over in England was waaaaay ahead of their time.
Either that, or Burt Rutan is the biggest Thunderbirds geek of all time, and he just *made* it work.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
2010's - humankind lifts people to the edge of the atmosphere.
2010's - humankind lifts JOYRIDING NON-MILLIONAIRE CIVILIANS to the edge of the atmosphere.
You're trying to put things in perspective, but are only looking at how high up people are going, and not the expansion in breadth in both quantity of people and the types of people doing it. During Apollo, only the experienced Air Force pilots who then became highly trained Astronauts went into space. In the decades following a tiny number of civilians went to space for a specific mission. Recently a few very wealthy tourists have visited the ISS. Soon, ordinary people with the money for a reasonable vacation will be able to see the earth from space with a company dedicated solely to providing this service.
At this rate by the time I'm retired, humankind will have set its sights for the top of the stairs. It may make it - but only if its risk-free.
At this rate by the time I'm middle-aged, I, Chris Burke, regular dude, will be able to see our Mother Earth from fucking SPACE, and be able to afford to do it on an annual basis!
If you can't see how this is bringing us closer to our Sci-Fi dreams than Yet Another Moon Mission where another two of the handful of professional astronauts add some bootprints to the lunar surface, then I think it's you who lack perspective.
The enemies of Democracy are
It does actually depend on what the money gets spent on. If a person uses it to buy Japanese cartoon porn then the only local stimulation is to the delivery guys and represents a small percentage of the overall cost--assuming you buy your cartoon porn in sufficient bulk. On the other hand if those tax dollars went to lay the first fiber optic lines, then it was a good investment.
Secondly, this idea that private companies are so much more efficient than government really needs to be proved. I've worked in or with 5 Fortune 100 companies and the amount of wasted money and man-hours I've seen boggles the mind. I'm sure government waste is at least as bad, but the difference is when public money is used they are under obligation to give detailed spending reports so you know when it's wasted. Private companies, even publicly traded ones, only have to show a profit and loss sheet. And they do a good job burying those losses as various expenses in order to protect their own asses.
Think of it like open source software. Government, at least in theory, is supposed to be transparent so you can see all the flaws and you are free to try and fix them. Companies tell you to trust them. That they know best and everything is great so you should give them your money (401k). Personally I think they're both good for different things, but if you don't like the government or taxes so much then either get constructive and fix it, or move to a different country.
When do we hit the asteroids?
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.