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Boeing Teams To Offer Spaceflight Trips

Posted by samzenpus on from the to-the-moon-alice dept.

coondoggie writes "Aerospace giant Boeing and outer space tourism proprietors Space Adventures teamed up today to offer low Earth orbit (LEO) flight services onboard Boeing's future commercial crew spacecraft. Under this agreement, Space Adventures will market passenger seats on commercial flights aboard the Boeing Crew Space Transportation-100 (CST-100) spacecraft. Boeing's CST-100, which is under development, can hold seven and is bigger than NASA's Apollo orbiter but smaller than NASA's Orion."

5 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. oh well by chichilalescu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    like a lot of things, getting off the planet will start off as an exotic fad for the ridiculously rich. as a scientist, I'm disgusted... but it's probably the only realistic option for progress on this front.

    --
    new sig
    1. Re:oh well by rufty_tufty · · Score: 5, Insightful

      To be fair, I thought so far more scientists had been sent into orbit than uber-rich people

      --
      "The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
    2. Re:oh well by khallow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      as a scientist, I'm disgusted

      I have found that you can't do much with the disgust of scientists. It's too freely given.

      but it's probably the only realistic option for progress on this front.

      So what you're saying is that you should feel gratitude instead.

      My point behind this little bit of snark is that here you admit that this is likely to be a very important pathway to getting stuff off planet. It is progress, that will lead to such things as cheaper access to space and subsequent greater ability to make scientific discoveries and inventions in space, for example. Yet I get the impression that you'd rather spurn this boon, if you could.

      As I see it, the lack of gratitude, for things that help scientists, but in a crass way (or in some cases, anything that triggers feelings of inferiority), is a psychological problem with the scientific community and one of many problems that I think sap scientific progress. It demonstrates bias in a community that supposedly strives to eliminate bias. I think you should waste no time on feeling disgust and instead ask "How can I/we take advantage of this situation?" After all, a spacecraft that can take cavorting rich people into space can also take experiments.

  2. Re:Coming soon: by dpilot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Bigelow

    Hundred Mile High Club

    Profit$$$

    --
    The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
  3. Why? by pavon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The practice of soaking the rich for exorbitantly-priced luxury goods/services in order to fund technological progress is one of my favorite features of capitalism. They become less rich and I get affordable cool shit several years down the road.