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Private Space Firm XCOR May Establish HQ In Midland, Texas
MarkWhittington writes "A deal is in the works to establish a corporate headquarters in Midland, Texas for XCOR, a commercial space company that is developing a suborbital space tourism vehicle, the Lynx. The deal will likely also involve certifying Midland International Air Port as a space port so that the Lynx can operate there. XCOR is characterizing the move as an expansion as it still intends to maintain operations at the Mojave Spaceport in California."
that fount of knowledge, progress and presidents.
Bring on the chryssalids!
Sub-orbital does not mean 'beneath space'. Hell, you could fly higher than the Moon on a 'sub-orbital' trajectory. The term 'sub-orbital' indicates you aren't in a closed orbit—at some point, you'll fall back to Earth.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
I don't know what kind of space you're talking about, but the one being used for the purpose of these craft is above 60 miles altitude... figure the service ceiling for a 747 is what, 41,000 ft, 8 miles, uh, you're about 50 miles shy of space, but who am I to split hairs.
Friend, I'm betting some ignorant clod standing at the dock in Spain in the 17th century, said "There goes that Columbus whack-o-doodle, sailing off the edge of the world, I hope a great big fat sea monster swallows him whole." He redefined what was possible for being human.
The future is up there. Because what's down here is extinction. Not tomorrow, or the day after, but someday, perhaps soon. Because big, nasty events happen here. 'We have mega-volcanoes, tectonic hoohah, and tsunamis that can wipe out entire coastlines. We have Extinction Level Events, and bio hazards, and wars and technological snafus galore. Have you not been reading the news? The west is on fire, and the east is melting. More records were broken in last month than ever before in history, and the weather people are now saying that the duration and strength of the current heat wave places it in a completely new category, redefining what is even possible for a heat wave. So its time for us to at once begin cleaning up our messes, but also be aware of the mortality of our species and make arrangements to get off this little rock, because we've begun to wear out or welcome. Or perhaps you'd prefer a 99.9% die-off and going back to an agrarian society (minus oil, coal and the means to leave if things got ugly.)
What a glorious triumph for textual browsers. What's next, the elinks rocket? I can't wait!!
I question everything. Because the world is a dynamic place, and you invariably get different answers today, than yesterday, so you missed that one. A 20 minute ride in a tin can to see the curve of the world the way Alan Shepard first saw it in 1960 (and as I recall that effort took more than a couple tax dollars), well that would be pretty awesome (and who am I to tell a person with $20,000 to burn how to burn it.) Anyway, that money goes to developing a technology that can get people into space for a "Reasonable Price", and I'm personally waiting for the Hilton hotel that does figure eights between earth and the moon.
If you told those folks in Spain about what would be available in the new world in a couple hundred years back in 1692, they'd pee themselves laughing or have you taken for a nice spin down in the dungeon with Torquemada to get those demon out. The fact that you have neither vision, nor the interest to discover what is possible for humanity doesn't grant that you should turn a cynical eye at those that do. A wiser person than I once said "The meek shall inherit the earth, the rest of us shall receive the stars."
The future is up there.
That would be the future without oxygen, water, radiation protection, or a biosphere. Not sure why you're so anxious to get there. The nearest star, which doesn't appear to have any habitable planets around it, is centuries away at any currently achievable speeds. Getting there will require multiple generations living in a tiny box where every breath has to be recycled; the result would be a totalitarian eco-fascist state beyond the wildest dreams of the conservative parody version of a loevchild of Al Gore and Stalin.
It seems like it would be simpler to just learn how to live within our ecological means here on earth, where worst case, if the drinking water is a bit salty, we at least get the oxygen for free.
Granted, if we had a Star Trek warp drive, which our best physics tells us is practically speaking impossible, then we might be able to reopen the swashbuckling 1600s' Age of Colonisation out beyond Jupiter, but that seems like a pretty long bet given that the LHC's Higgs verification has slammed the door shut on amost plausible extensions of Standard Model physics.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
What a shock: moving to a state that places corporations above people - especially w.r.t. taxes.
Just like the foreign car companies that only open factories in the southeast US, where the politicians are literal fatcats and the workers are suicidally anti-Union.
Friend, I'm betting some ignorant clod standing at the dock in Spain in the 17th century, said "There goes that Columbus whack-o-doodle, sailing off the edge of the world, I hope a great big fat sea monster swallows him whole." He redefined what was possible for being human.
At Columbus' times it was common knowledge that the world is round and size of the Earth was calculated by Erastothenes with 2% error 1500 years earlier.
Columbus didn't get rejected because he believed the world is round - he believed that it's 2/3 smaller and Asia spans much farther to the east - he believed the distance to Asia is about the actual distance to Americas.
He only got lucky when he encountered an unknown continent just as the supplies were running out and he never accepted that the lands he sailed to are not Asia.
There are essentially 3 trajectories a rocket can take: 1) Sub-orbital, item will return to earth 2) Orbital, item will orbit the earth 3) Escape, item will leave the earth's gravitational hold While I get what point you're trying to make, you confuse your own point by stating "you could fly higher than the Moon on a 'sub-orbital' trajectory" because by definition in order to get to the moon the item must use an escape trajectory.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.