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New Mexico Spaceport Nearly Ready For Business
Cutting_Crew writes "I am sure many of us have heard about this story, but it looks like Spaceport America is finally ready to take off (no pun intended). The latest construction pictures [Note: database might be slightly flaky] are up to view. Want to be one of the first to take a ride? It will set you back $200,000. I don't know how many people will be able to afford such a trip, outside of Las Vegas, Hollywood, Cupertino, Redmond, and few retirees, but I suppose they are thinking that they can make their money back with this project in the long term. Touring the space frontier seems a little steep. A lot of people are just trying to make living without being foreclosed on."
Either become a journalist and write your stupid "Oh my god, the world is so unfair! There are rich and poor people, OMG!" or you write unbiased, nice summary for slashdot.
What does this summary here serve? Some author who wants to point the moral finger? That, yet nothing else, was indeed achieved...
It will set you back $200,000. I don't know how many people will be able to afford such a trip, outside of Las Vegas, Hollywood, Cupertino, Redmond, and few retirees, but I suppose they are thinking that they can make their money back with this project in the long term.
When you have something with limited availability you start with those customers with a higher willingness to pay and charge them something at or near their perceived value. When you have exhausted this segment of the market you can lower the price and go for the next tier down. Walking down the prices in this manner maximizes revenue, everyone pays near their perceived value. So they are really making their money back in the shortest term possible.
Does the above sound like something coming from a Virgin shill?
The database is fine. The page in question is just a blogspot alias. It can also be accessed at http://spaceportamericaconstruction.blogspot.com/ which incidentally benefits greatly from the use of a pager.
Not a slashvertisement, just pretentious.
I mean, if you want a "Spaceport", why not go to where the facilities are the best? The Okla. Spaceport in Burns Flat has longer, wider runways (13,503' x 300' w/1000 overruns versus only 10,000' x 200'), better access to major transportation and major population centers, 50,000 square foot manufacturing facility with loading docks adjacent to main line rail spur, and a golf course on site. BTW, it's where Armadillo Aerospace goes to play
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
I hate when people use the phrase "no pun intended". Especially when it's typed. Especially when its obvious the phrase was, in fact, there to POINT OUT the pun... sigh
Was anybody else reminded of Star Trek first contact by the summary? The scene there seemed to exhibit quite a bit of wealth disparity too. It's the same old story.
Ladeling out soup at the local shelter is a dull necessity--it probably didn't inspire the people of the 1930s the way airships, airplanes and Buck Rogers movies did. All of those things could have been dismissed as frivolities. Today, airlines employ thousands and soup kitchens are still... soup kitchens.
Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with charity. It's just that it doesn't inspire everybody in the same way, and there can actually be an immoral side to charity. It's the side where the giver feels an undue sense of importance, and subconsciously partners with those who perpetuate the need for charity...
For those who don't know and could be bothered, this is a Star Wars IV reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mos_Eisley.
Mos Eisley joke
Quite a few. There tens of thousands of people worldwide worth more than $30 million, and just in America, 3 million millionaires (and that's not including residential property as part of the calculation).
The people struggling to pay for somewhere to live aren't exactly the target market.
What is Area 51, Alex?
Chinese made bootleg Soyuz capsules :)
The big difference here, in contrast to Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg, is the elimination of vertical launchpads.
Keep in mind that NASA wisely chose to launch space missions from strategic spots where, in case of a mishap, the rocket crashes in the ocean.
Can you imagine the catastrophe of tons and tons of ignited LOX flooding a populated area? NASA did.
This is why NASA is hunting around for alternative launch spots with the exact same geographic characteristics as the current ones, Guyana has made some noise for equatorial missions, Baja California for circumpolar missions.
But now, with horizontal takeoff and a little bit of scramjet mojo, you can build a spaceport just about anywhere. Much smaller payloads than NASA, as well as suborbital flights only so far, but it's a highly encouraging milestone.
Having put in my two cents' worth, something just occurred to me: Risk of crashing in a populated area like Illinois or Ohio aside, surely there would be a significant benefit to launching traditional NASA missions from a facility high in the Rocky Mountains, a 3-4 kms gravitational head start would save TONS of fuel.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
Would that be a "Soy" capsule?
Sorry, couldn't resist...
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
"...Touring the space frontier seems a little steep. A lot of people are just trying to make living in a home a reality without being foreclosed on."
Uh, remember that old saying? Goes something like "the rich keep getting richer..."?
Yeah, that's not just some old nursery rhyme. It's pretty much the reason we're in this financial mess, so don't sit here and make it sound like we're gonna struggle to find the rich out there willing to part with a paltry $200K. If anyone thought that was anywhere close to reality, Spaceport America would have never been built.
"Sorry, the car was solving a real need"
Sorry, that's false. The car *ended up* solving a real need, in fact, the current real need for a car is mostly a selfacomplishness of the car itself.
The first cars were certainly obnoxious luxury devices for the rich ones.
I don't know how many people will be able to afford such a trip, outside of Las Vegas, Hollywood, Cupertino, Redmond, and few retirees,
On the Forbes' list of billionaires, only 7 of the top 20 are americans. So presumably the majority of people that services like this are intended for will not be american nationals, either. To only consider one (5% of the world's population) country as the potential client-base is incredibly parochial and I'm sure the space travel industry won't make that mistake.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
It's worth a couple hundred for me to hang out in the terminal and watch commercial space flights landing and taking off as nonchalantly as though it were Logan (airport, that is). Even if I can't go up, it would still feel good to watch the activity man's nascent commercial space adventures.
Of course hat big, lovable(?) difference means they are at least an order of magnitude away, in energy expenditure required, from being able to reach orbit.
...probably closer to the most feasible and/or intended function (which follow the form, and vice versa; nice overall, less geopolitical complications than with ICBMs, and without the need to have a launcher placed in the theatre (or bomber carrier getting nearby), how convenient; the good old search for tech which can destabilize the balance and trigger a new arms race / sales).
...which for a spaceplane are required to make it even barely feasible. Similarly, 3 km of elevation won't make much of a difference - the rockets cover that very quickly. Their main goal is not height, but speed (launching near equator is more worthwhile)
...where it doesn't matter how "sleek" something looks. We build vehicles meant for various environments in very different, specific ways. Making a spacecraft out of an aircraft appears to have limited utility (and by the time it maybe-who-knows might, we could be on our way to in-situ manufacturing and making the "from reactive atmosphere to low orbit" problem uninteresting)
Locations are not that much of a problem, a lot of Earth's area is an ocean. Also, industrial complexes tend to be near coastline (even if their specific area is unsuitable for launches, it makes for an easy means to transport large cargo). Besides, the spaceport in question is also in rather desolated area. And generally, it's largely also about planned "crashes" of staging.
Those scramjet vehicles, that pop out now and then, might be possibly better described as "missile demonstrator" or "weapons carrier"
When you really seriously do the math (like they did with HOTOL, for example), ~winged orbital vehicles using the atmosphere during launch turn out not really better than a "dumb rocket" using comparable materials
And X-34 (plus few others being worked on, Dream Chaser for example) is just a payload of ordinary rocket.
More generally, historically, everybody at first expected "aerodynamic" or "spaceplane-ish" shapes from reentry vehicles, and worked towards it hard. They proved relatively unworkable. Blunt shape entry capsule was quite late innovation, an improvement; and a bit of a surprise. There's nothing wrong with capsules. Physics, rocket equation, are a bitch - and they override dreams (here, about expected modes of space travel); dreams unduly extrapolating rates and directions of observed progress. Look at those airplanes from "our" times (imagined during rapid advances of marine tech; and we can even build them - take a Harrier, remove wings and canopy... still a horrible idea vs. "boring" reality).
Consider how the "spaceplanes" came to dominate scifi... around the 40s, during rapid advances of airplane tech (I can see a pattern...); how the designers and decision-makers of the Shuttle were undoubtedly raised on those works of fiction. How they gave us an analogue of Catalina, at best (Spruce Goose, at worst); but something which looked very soothing and "inspiring" to the already constrained public imagination, already quite accustomed to airliners / Concorde. Something which probably robbed us at least of a decade of progress; was conceptually obsolete (with automatic rendezvous, docking and routine return of large valuable cargo done since the 60s) before it seriously got onto drawing boards. Wasting most of upmass on airframe; a lot of good that does in space
Grandiose, fabulous, "awesome" styles typical of scifi (again, works of fiction) mostly just constrain public imagination, make them expect something palatable, nothing too uncomfortable and too
One that hath name thou can not otter
Man, you're really bad at snark.
You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.
But I'm going to build a Taco Stand at the entrance for the crowds of onlookers when these things take off.
There is nothing 'measly' about Baikonur.
In Mother Russia our meters are 10000 times the size your *measly* western meters.
That places Baikonur already in space without rocket.
School children wear space suit to ride bicycle there.
straight from the submittors mouth....i didnt write that part - they changed up my initial submission some, including the links but they totally added the database part -
Of course not, I was intended to be humorous.
I did get that.
What I thought about was South Park.
You might also want to know that Baikonur is the "World's First Spaceport" / you should know better than to just reuse Foxnews headline as the title of your submission...
...and at what cost / not strictly on merit; while being at the bottom of developed countries in social mobility anyway, so "land of opportunity" or "American Dream" were a myth, in themselves just a product to sell, in any event)
(and the reality you grumble about is how the world always looks like for vast majority of people / your place maybe just had a relatively brief period of masking it slightly better
One that hath name thou can not otter
True. In large parts, the car created a need - as evidenced by the abomination that is suburbia.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Would it have to be located in Ciudad Juarez or Tijuana to qualify for Mos Eisley status?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.