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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...
Presumably, space flights will also have cabin crew. That will probably become one of the most coveted jobs out there :)
*sigh*
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
Would that be a "Soy" capsule?
Sorry, couldn't resist...
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
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
You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.