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Scientists, Not Just Tourists, Are Getting Tickets to Ride Into Suborbital Space

Posted by Roblimo on from the price-war-at-the-OK-space-corral dept.

"Science, perhaps even more than tourism (free reg. may be required to read), could turn out to be big business for Virgin Galactic and other companies that are aiming to provide short rides above the 62-mile altitude that marks the official entry into outer space, eventually on a daily basis." Virgin is looking at ticket prices in the $200,000 range, which is peanuts compared to the millions some scientific space expeditions can cost, even for brief experiments. And if you don't even have *that* much in your research budget, John Carmack has been touting $105,000 space flights for nearly a year now, and Xcor Aerospace has been taking $95,000 space ride reservations since 2008. It looks like the biggest customer for short space flights for scientific experiments so far is the Southwest Research Institute, but many others are lining up, especially since, the article quotes one scientist as saying, “It’s almost impossible to get research on the space station at the moment." Of course, none of these commercial space ventures has actually carried any paying passengers into space yet, but it's only a matter of time before some of them do.

3 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What sort of experiments? by slick7 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Out of curiosity (and no I'm not trying to be snarky but actually curious) what sorts of experiments are people looking to carry out in 5 minutes of free fall? Doesn't seem like a lot of time.

    How much time do you really for Zero-G sex, porn to make millions and promote Zero-G experimentation? Imagination is as limitless as space itself.

    --
    The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
  2. With all these tourists, what about super bugs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Space flight turns Salmonella into super-bug.

    http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/09/space_flight_turns_salmonella_into_super-bug.php

    Who's going to bring the first deadly virus back to Earth?

  3. Huge difference between these and low orbit by Frangible · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Virgin's the furthest ahead here, and has a small fleet of Scaled Composite's SpaceShipTwo currently in testing. It's an aircraft-launched rocket plane, derivative of the Boeing X-20. The earlier SpaceShipOne was derivative of the Bell X-15.

    Max altitudes:
    - SS2: 110km (est.)
    - SS1: 112km
    - X-15: 108km
    - X-20: 160km (est.)
    - Silbervogel: 145km (est.) (WWII German design the X-20 is derived from)
    - Me-263 Komet: 14km (WWII German fighter the X-15 is derived from)

    (Yes, the "Sputnik moment" of using German technology strikes again)

    The ISS is parked at about 186km.

    The rocket plane design is cheap, but I'm not sure it's possible to actually get the necessary altitude with it. I don't know if the X-20 would've gotten that altitude or not, but Scaled Composite's estimate of 110km seems more sane given their design carries 7 more people than the X-20.

    The ISS's problem isn't the cost involved in getting to it as the Soyuz is pretty cheap -- which is $45k per seat to NASA, or $20k/seat to space tourists -- it's that the number of personnel is limited by the escape spacecraft, which has been a single Soyuz capsule, so there can only be three astronauts there at any one time. NASA was supposed to have made an escape shuttle that would hold more for the ISS, but Congress canceled the funding before it could be completed.

    I don't know that these designs are actually that practical for much as they don't achieve low-earth orbit. But if nothing else, it goes to show that Germany had some damn fine rocket engineers in the 1940s.