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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?
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?
Nonsense. The problem with the space race is that it was unsustainable. There was no way any nation would maintain that kind of spending for an extended period of time. We were spedning around three percent of GDP... for something with intangible payback.
Now, we have the chance at sustainable flights into space. If this actually succeeds, and we have many flights going up every month... and if we actually get more than one company in this game... we will see gradual improvements. Instead of being a money pit, it will be a money generator. And that is where real progress is at.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
3% of GDP was the smallest percentage we had spent on exploration in the history of the country (well really before the country was discovered as Spain spent more than 3% of GDP on Columbus's voyage despite being broke). The fact that we now spend even less is a national disgrace.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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?"
The Louisiana Purchase took quite a while to pay off, it was still quite a deal and the right thing to do. A nation which stagnates is a nation which is slowly dying. Since Imperialism here at home doesn't look to have a net positive payout I say we should focus a bit more of our finances on something that is at least likely to advance human knowledge if not material wealth.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
YouTube link.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Those same people used to spend about as much on personal computers.. now you have one.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Instead of being a money pit, it will be a money generator. And that is where real progress is at.
I know everyone here knows this and ponder on the below once in a while but let me say this again in case someone never thought about it..
You notice this whole thread, the money spent, received, progress, the whole construct, is like a tiny little noise on this tiny little round ball of rock. Debating whether spaceflight is "profitable" only makes sense within this ball of rock. Benefiting us rock people, to do more within the confine of the ball.
The Apollo mission, can be seen as PR for the cold war, benefiting the people on the rock. But to our dear astronauts who'd been on the moon, I can confidently guess that the gratitude they have is something beyond which doesn't benefit anyone here. It wasn't money, technology, making your boss more money. It was the pure love and happiness of being "out there". To even start to go to space, and be in space, we must stop thinking about how it'll benefit us down here. There're many things you can do instead of flying to space. Bill Gates' doing some good without spaceflight. Spaceflight opens our minds. It does not buy you a Royale with Cheese.
Ok back to Star Trek TNG :)
Intangible payback? Where the heck do you think that money went? Why, into the economy. 400-500,000 people were employed in one way or another by the space program or spinoffs. That's a hell of a lot more effective return on investment than any of the ~10% of the GDP pissed away into "jobs stimulus" in just the last year.
Brett
Nonsense. The problem with the space race is that it was unsustainable. There was no way any nation would maintain that kind of spending for an extended period of time
How so?
It's not like they're shoveling the money out of an airlock, almost every dime of it gets spend stimulating your local/national economy.... Giving tax breaks and the likes to stimulate the economy is supposedly good for the country, but actually paying people to design/build things isn't?
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
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
I think you mean 3% of the Federal budget, not GDP. See http://www.richardb.us/nasa.html. In which case, for the years 1962-1972, NASA's budget was 2.86% of the Federal budget.
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
I was actually having an interesting conversation with a research policy advisor in my country last night about this topic.
In her opinion, government research grants should be spent on fields which do not have immediate commercial value, because companies are likely unwilling to pursue it themselves and also because the future value of a technology is difficult to gauge.
For example, when the transistor was invented, it was impossible to tell that one day they would be miniaturized to the point where handheld computers were available. Any attempt to place a value on the invention of the transistor would have massively undervalued it. Companies in the past may have pursued the approach of funding research for giggles, but the business model today has changed and almost everything needs to have profit making potential.
Now there's no way to definitively determine whether a research field will be valuable in the future, but space exploration is probably one of the ones with a large potential. I say this because of the overlap with the rest of the aerospace industry, applications for telecommuncations and materials research.
Concorde isn't flying in part due to the so-called security screenings in airports (I'll concede that point) and because it was simply getting old. With the crash of the Concorde in France, the needed changes to make the vehicle safer and to bring it up to date simply weren't economical.
The other problem is that the range of the Concorde was incredibly limited. The New York to London route was pretty much near its routine operational flying range, and certainly couldn't get to Los Angeles or South America.
Still, it is important to note there is a market for those flights, and it wasn't a lack of customers which forced the discontinuing of the Concorde flights. Tickets on those flights also cost about $10k each.
As for speeding up the security screenings, keep in mind that they are kept deliberately slow and long as a matter of principle. It is the government asserting it sovereignty upon the common serfs of the country and letting them know full well that they no longer have a say in the operations of the government. It certainly isn't to stop a terrorist, as Flight 93 on 9/11 showed exactly the best way to deal with a terrorist who wants to crash into a building. Do you think millions of people taking their shoes off is actually protecting air travel?
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.
Bullshit. The Apollo program expanded the economy because of all the spin-off technologies that were invented for it, such as surface-mount electronics which your computer would not work without. I've seen estimates between a $7 and $50 return for every $1 invested in NASA in the 60s. It's just like how WWII created all kinds of technologies (radar, microwave ovens, jet engines, etc.) which expanded the economy, except no one had to die in the space program (except for that early Apollo mission, but 3 dead is a lot better than 50 million dead).
People simply aren't as innovative when they aren't being pressured to do so by some kind of emergency. No one's going to come up with truly groundbreaking technology in their garage, and corporations aren't going to invest in anything unless it has a 5-year payback.
Of course, your short-sighted, greedy, and stupid attitude is very typical of Americans (both the people and the politicians), which is why the USA is going to become a backwater pretty soon, and China is going to be the world leader in 20-30 years.