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John Carmack To Cut Space Tourism Prices 50%
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like John Carmack, through Armadillo Aerospace, will be battling Burt Rutan and Richard Branson to make space travel affordable. From the article: 'Space Adventures is going to use an Armadillo Technologies rocket to launch amateur astronauts 62 miles into the sky. Nothing new, except that they will do it at half the price of Virgin Galactic's ticket, and in a real rocket!' Perhaps I'll visit space, after all."
Do people still need the "early adopter" concept explained to them? We live in a technological society where new gadgets and experiences come onto the market all the time. The early adopters pay top dollar for them, this attracts competitors, and the price starts to drop.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Jump in early and get burned? I hope it's not literally in this case... somehow I'd wait and have the rockets perfected by experience first...
Doesn't Mark Shuttleworth feel like a sucker now?
No, because Mark went into orbit in a fair dinkum Russian spacecraft, which he got to fly (partly) himself. The vehicle being discussed here won't go into orbit.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Well, it's nice to see that competition in a market can drive prices down. Now the trick is to prevent them from forming a cartel.
Mind the frickin' laser...
Even it it were a hundred bucks, 5 minutes isn't a vacation ... at best it's a quickie.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
I'm not rich (I'm a community college professor), but this is a price I could afford if I made it a priority in my life and planned my finances around it. Some people who make the same amount of money I do make it a priority to own a car that costs roughly this much.
Arguments against:
Find free books.
Yeah, we should make sure it is deregulated. It worked out great for us re the financial sector and oil industries!
it makes you wonder about nasa prices for each missions... and also wonder why this has not happened before
Well, given Carmack's proposal isn't even in the same league as the average shuttle launch, I suspect the cost differential is pretty understandable. After all, last I checked, NASA didn't bother with piddly little missions to send people just barely past the boundary of space (which is 62 mi/100 km) and then immediately bring them right back again. The delta between that and a real orbital mission is massive.
No, this is but a very tiny step toward real, commercial spaceflight. And the step from this to real commercial space flight is much much larger.
If you think those industries are unregulated, then I would like to see what you consider to be regulated. I mean, once you have governmental control over the money supply, how much a bank can and cannot loan, etc., it becomes pretty hard to call it unregulated. Poorly regulated, perhaps, but not at all left to its own devices.
SSC
It ain't space below 7km/s
Hmm, I guess Alan Shepard wasn't the first American in space after all (considering Freedom 7 had a suborbital trajectory, and had a max velocity of well below 7km/s).
which, to come full circle, they likely would not have done without the assurance that they would not lose money trying to. Thus NASA still is the source for all this neat stuff. And while it was made by an NGO, it was made under contract to a GO, thus is PD.
-nB
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Srs face now: This is something that annoys me no end. Just like you'll never meet someone on the internet who doesn't have at least a 9 inch cock, and still thinks it could be an inch or two bigger, every time people talk about endurance they always say "20 minutes is still too quick, you have to last at least an hour!". That's bullshit. On the first count, anyone over about 6" who's been with more than one or two women will know that sometimes, more than 6 inches just. won't. fit. Anyone who says they're "9 inches and that all the bitches love it" is either 5" or less, or a virgin. On the second count, no matter how much lube you use, you're going to start chafing after about 15-20 minutes unless you're either fully tantric or you're both on IRC at the same time or something, and forget to make with the thrusting.
The only correct answer is "if it's big enough that she couldn't take any more, without being too big and hurting her, and if it lasts long enough for her to get off a couple of times, but not long enough to chafe, then you're doing it right."
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
It's an insult to those of us that have grown on Science Fiction and on a dream of visiting other star systems.
To those of us who have grown up on Science and Engineering, your words are a gross insult. It's too bad that actual space travel isn't sexy enough for the Star Trek crowd (or whatever fantasy you prefer to reality), but we shouldn't diminish genuine accomplishments (well, *cough* when those accomplishments happen).
Unless you end up in an uncontrollable spin, pass out and die.
But yeah, that would be fun.
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