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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."
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.
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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?
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 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.