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Richard Branson Plans Orbital Spaceships For Virgin Galactic
Velcroman1 writes "Following the historic first rocket-powered flight of its SpaceShipTwo vehicle, Virgin Galactic plans to build a fleet of spaceships and begin ferrying hundreds of tourists into space in 2014. And then? A whole new kind of spacecraft, Sir Richard Branson said. 'We'll be building orbital spaceships after that,' Branson told Fox News Tuesday, 'so that people who want to go for a week or two can.' Assuming the cost is on the same scale, would you pay a few hundred grand for a few weeks in orbit?"
If I could get to orbit for $1,000,000, forget it. The problem is that $200K is just barely in reach, and I'd start thinking about selling my house.
So, short answer. Yes.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
I thought the first customer launch would be in 2011. Between the recession and perfection where human life is involved they took longer.
I know someone who took the oreintation course in 2010. They put you in a similator so you you know how violent certain parts of the ride will be.
Would I if I had it to spend? Absolutely. Can I or most of us afford to spend the cost of a house on this? Sadly, no.
I suspect most of us will never get to do this, which sucks. Because I would dearly love to do this before I die.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
is if its Branson involved, he wont be doing anything but collecting other peoples money for doing very little work personally.
From the article "...Firing its rocket for 16 seconds and racing to a speed of Mach 1.2, fast enough to beat the speed of sound."
You don't say... Mach 1.2 is faster than sound? Interesting, you must be smart...
During a press conference surrounding the annoucement, Branson confirmed a name for the proposed space station has not been put forward, though he clarified "Nobody will mistake it for a mood, and please, call me Darth."
I guess the 1960s really are back.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If I had the money to spend, sure thing. Any geek would.
Problem is ... I don't have the money to spend. Not even if I sell my house. And I suspect most geeks don't either. The question is, to be a bit blunt, rather stupid.
I presume Virgin will find plenty of people willing to spend 200K on a week-long orbital vacation (probably not too many geeks) but less people with the actual cash in hand.
[willing to spend] != [able to spend]
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
I realize that the ISS is for research but, don't they already accept tourists in there. What I'm saying is that if I were a multimillionaire I would rather go this route right now instead of waiting for an unproven system by who knows when.
So many people say they want to go, but I find it amusing that of the handful of space tourists since 2001, very few have written inspiring books or stories about it. A quick check of Wikipedia seems to indicate only Guy Laliberté (flew in 2009) as authoring something about his experiences.
If going to space is so great, why haven't the few who've gone written more about it?
As a flight attendant.
In 50 years, 200K might be cheap for a Galactic Virgin.
Are you suggesting that Virgin Galactic invade Somalia?
The poor scramble for food, food stamps ( SNAP program ) is being cut
The 20% of American children are in poverty
Pensions and Social Security are being cut leaving people with a life of work out in the cold
Our priorities are wrong.
No, our priorities are just right. Unless you want to kill off 90% of the worlds population, people will be *forever* in poverty. There's not enough resources on the Earth -- by a substantial factor -- to support seven billion people without 3/4 of them living in poverty conditions.
If you let the plight of the unfortunate (and irresponsible -- those people living in poverty are continuing to procreate, after all) stop progress, humanity will go extinct on this planet, along with every other form of life. Five billion years of evolution, of living and dying, would be wiped out as the sun ages... for nothing.
If humans get off the planet, there could be trillions of lives that get to exist because of it.
If a week in orbit drives advancement in technology that gets live off this planet for good, 'm morally comfortable with a few billion living in poverty for the opportunity for many trillions to live in the future. We don't get a second chance at this -- we've built up this opportunity on a technological house of cards that can't be rebuilt if it falls. There's no "easy" energy left. If people don't get off the planet and something happens that knocks us back from our "modern" level of technology, there won't be another industrial revolution to get us back. If we go extinct and some other species evolves intelligence 200 million years from now, they *won't* have the chance to do what we do -- because we won't have left the energy resources that drove advancement for the last 5000 years. Climate conditions have changed, you won't get new oil or new coal being laid down.
The morally correct thing to do would be to put vastly MORE resources into getting life multiplanet, as a stepping stone to getting it beyond there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hky7wN2QGko
Alternatively...they could offer "Natalie Portman" service, naked and petrified.
Oh yeah, with hot grits...of course
In zero G.
For two weeks.
Sorry, gotta go and lie down on my lawn now.
I won't spend more than 5 digits on anything but a house.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"Orbital Spaceships".
Branson didn't elaborate on exactly what he meant by these. Sort of sounds like a reusable Space Shuttle type of craft though which can go into orbit and stay there for as long as its supplies last then return to Earth.
I wonder how long it will be though before he starts sending special "Orbital Spaceships" on a one-way trip into orbit where they will stay and act as "Space Stations" that normal "Orbital Spaceships" can later dock with?
In fact; perhaps he could design them in such a way so that multiple special orbital spaceships can be interconnected one at a time to form a larger space station? That way each piece of the space station can carry itself up into orbit in one go without requiring another ship to carry the equivalent parts up in several trips.
But regardless; even using the piecemeal method it seems like Branson could start ferrying Space Station parts into orbit as soon as those new "Orbital Spaceships" are launching. Simply send up some of those sections and parts up with each and every tourist trip, with as many of those tourist trips as he is planning to have it shouldn't take very long to accumulate as much material up in orbit to build whatever he wants (perhaps an Orbital Virgin Galactic Hotel?).
Heck; he wouldn't even need to bother with spacewalks and spacesuits, just drop a couple of tele-robotics builders in orbit with the material stash and his guys could start building from the comfort of their office chairs down at Headquarters on Earth, possibly wearing Oculus Rift VR headsets. The future is being built!
In a world of climate change and rising temperatures I can't help but wonder: What is the carbon/energy footprint of a single ticket? To speak nothing of the total impact if this "business"? It look to me like Virgin Galactic and its customers are likely to be the absolute worst polluters on the planet ...
Would they be so eager to go into space for fun if they had to pay the actual environmental cost as well? Allowing it for science is one thing ... doing it solely for entertainment is another!
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
Doesn't he claim to be green? Rocket travel is just about the most environment unfriendly thing you can do.
There will always be poor, there will always be hungry, there will always be poverty. There will always be greed.
Why wait for those problems to be solved if there's no end to them and say something as exciting as human space travel for the masses is unimportant? If it helps bring down the costs and increases the amount of interest, it could one day be a solution to the poor since there are unlimited resources out there. The survival of every species on earth could depend on that innovation, research and excitement one day.
Compared to what's at stake I would encourage you to keep an open mind.
Assuming the cost is on the same scale, would you pay a few hundred grand for a few weeks in orbit?
If the cost were that low, and I had the money somehow, I'd love to spend it on a few weeks in orbit. However, recognizing how much harder it is to get into orbit than to just go straight up, I have strong doubts that costs won't be a factor of 10 or 100 higher. Also, since it's already taken more than twice as long as originally projected for this thing to be ready, I wouldn't expect anything orbital before 2020 or so.
a few billion living in poverty
Not to mention that the few billion living in today's poverty live WAY better than those in poverty even a couple of centuries ago.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
They probably take Air Miles.
Yeah, but it's Virgin. The fuel surcharges will cost more than $200,000 to orbit and back if you use miles.
You wrote:
"Unless you want to kill off 90% of the worlds population..."
I would like to subscribe to your newsletter...
Any good ideas in this direction? It would solve so many problems, unemployment, high real-estate prices, traffic, hunger, poverty, ease of netfame/tv appearances, distribution of resources, global warming, and hopefully, get rid of all the stupid people.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Fortunately I'm able to afford it, and yes, I'm very ready to go. If the human body were actually able to handle an extremely long time in zero-G, or they used rotation or something to create some gravity, and solved a few other issues like radiation shielding, I'd go for years, even the rest of my life. We NEED to start doing this, we need to make LEO, the moon, and further out part of our world. A common part, where it's not only the few of us that can afford it, but virtually ANY person that desires to live and work in space can find a home there. Our future is in the stars, it's always been so. Given the rate at which we're destroying this stone we call home, we'd bloody well better learn to call space home.
Yes, absolutely, I want to go, but not just for a brief hop to peek at the blackness of the sky and the curvature of the earth. I've already seen that, in a MiG. What I want is to go up for at least a week or two, and then longer, a lot longer, when we've gotten it figured out. I've no doubt that we can do it.
Earth has more than enough resources for 20 billion people if we were not squandering them on welfare for the non-working leaches who live off the hard work of others. Of course I am talking about the owning class of billionaire plutocrats.
Are they going to honor my reservation with Pan Am ?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
A lot of people living in today's poverty live better than those NOT in poverty a few centuries ago.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
no you use this tech to put missiles in orbit so virgin galactic can nuke Somalia from space.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
We can solve world hunger within 30 years, by handing our contraceptives. Those are not expensive and it doesn't require any mass culling.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The idea of spending any more than an hour or two in microgravity is quite unappealing. It's simply not a friendly environment for gravity bound creatures. The simple thought of living without running water.. The thought of being confined to a ship with a bunch of smelly people.. The thought of potentially getting ill while up there (bad enough with gravity but without?).. The thought of being bombarded by radiation.. Much information about the living conditions on the ISS is published freely online, and over the years I've read these stories. Honestly, it has no appeal to me. I once spent two days hiking Mt Shasta. I got to the summit to be blown away by the view. Thirty minutes later, I was ready to descent because there was a big fat tbone and cigar waiting for me in my camp. Chances are, I would get bored of the view after a few hours anyway.
Where's my sock? There it is...
[Citation needed]
I mean, maybe. But then a few centuries ago people were free to make a living off the land. Now they have to beg for jobs and no amount of work is going to help them without that when they have nothing to work with and there's no unclaimed land to farm.
It may well be that the only truly free people were those who came into lands that belonged to nobody and it also may well be that those in fitting climates weren't really bad off. The golden times of mankind are over. Maybe there are new golden times far in the future, but this would require some really hard work to get us off this rock. And with "us" I don't mean just a handful of stinking rich tourists in LEO.
Thank god there's not the equivalent of Jerusalem syndrome for space travelers!
Strike that, that would be funny as hell!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Chuck Testa!
Humor aside, once upon a time I would have given anything to make orbit. That was back when I had nothing. Now, I think that if I had $200,000 I'm pretty sure that would buy every vacation I'd like to take from now until the day I die. So, a period in orbit measured in minutes/days, or seeing the world from the air/ground for a period measured in days/weeks... No choice.
Don't know if it's still the plan, but a few years ago Virgin were predicting the cost of sub-orbital flights would drop to $50,000 within five years of operation. While that's still expensive, it's much closer to a typical 'extreme' vacation like a few days in Antarctica.
I have to really wonder who will build this vision. While Scaled Composites is an innovative company, it's leader isn't exactly a spring chicken. Rutan is almost 70 and while I know he has bright people working with him, without Burt this thing will go nowhere.
It's also been almost 9 years since they won the X-Prize so IMO, if they're not flying the public by 2014 (end of) this will be a venture that Branson and Rutan won't be seeing anytime soon.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
If that where only so, unfortunately the catholic church tells many of those people that they will burn in hell for all eternity if they so much as use a rubber or take a pill. It is quiet easy in the US at least to come buy free condoms, my college campus makes a habit of giving them away by the handfull. Many clinics give them away and who is so hard up that they cant pay 75 cents for one out of a vending machine at the nearest truck stop bathroom. The only people poor enough not to be able to get them also would refuse to use them because some wrinkled old monk in Rome says so.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Are you suggesting that Virgin Galactic invade Somalia?
I don't know how you can make a Galactic Empire invading a hive of scum and villainy without getting a +5 Awesome. For shame Slashdot, for shame.
Moron. Just think about it for a minute, take a long term view...
Without the commercialization of space we are all doomed to live and die on earth, with the commercialization of space the stars are within our long term reach.
I as a child I read Arthur C Clarke's 'the next 50 years in space' and if I remember correctly, by now we should have colonies on both the Moon and Mars. Then I remember reading about project Orion, which would give us the ability to lift entire orbitals into space. But of course budget cuts and 'it's not green' saw an end to my childhood dreams.
Then I look at 'greenies' like you, and I despair. You want to keep the kindergarten neat and tidy, and can't see any further than that.
Nice. Calling people "moron" but posting as AC? Won't stand by your words, eh? What a brave person you are!
If you're not just trolling, but actually think I look no further than my childrens kindergarten, then I pity you. You must have a very narrow perception of other people.
I have no objecting to commercializing space. I have objections to doing it in ways which will doom the planet - or at least significantly hamper future generations ability to live a proper life. We simple do not have the right to destroy the planet - period.
You speak of long term views, yet you are hopelessly shortsighted. You propose commercializing space with current engine technology at a cost which is obviously way too high.
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
What is the obsession with space tourism? Get a decent monitor and zoom out on Google Earth while riding a roller-coaster. Same experience. Why not guided tours of the ocean depths instead? There actually is "alien" life down there.
Earth has more than enough resources for 20 billion people if we were not squandering them on welfare for the non-working leaches who live off the hard work of others. Of course I am talking about the owning class of billionaire plutocrats.
The total financial resources of all of the worlds' billionaires distributed evenly across the entire planet wouldn't put everyone at a lower-class American lifestyle for a year.
Keep in mind, the *vast* majority of that wealth is held in limbo -- in banks and investments, things like that. Its *not* being spent on things that chew up time, energy and resources. If a few trillion dollars suddenly showed up in the pockets of everyone on the planet, there wouldn't be resources for people to buy anything, power the things they buy, etc ... Economics doesn't work that way.
A population of 7 billion absolutely -- by any measure -- requires the vast majority to live in poverty. The problem with economics is not the billionaires, its the 400 million middle class Chinese, 150 million middle class Americans, etc ... The amount of resources used per dollar spent by someone poor is orders of magnitude higher than when a billionaire spends it.
Look at it this way -- you buy a $100 DVD player, you're able to do so because of the millions of people living in poverty who are mining the rare earths in it, assembling it in 12 hour shifts, etc ... a billionaire spending $50m on a boat isn't penny pinching. The resources that go into a $50m boat is a lot lower than the resources that goes into $50m DVD players, because of the VAST markup.
While most can't or shouldn't afford this, there will still be at least 70 million people who can easily afford this if they chose (the top 1% of wealthy humans). It's a HUGE market.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
[Citation needed]
I mean, maybe. But then a few centuries ago people were free to make a living off the land. Now they have to beg for jobs and no amount of work is going to help them without that when they have nothing to work with and there's no unclaimed land to farm.
It may well be that the only truly free people were those who came into lands that belonged to nobody and it also may well be that those in fitting climates weren't really bad off. The golden times of mankind are over. Maybe there are new golden times far in the future, but this would require some really hard work to get us off this rock. And with "us" I don't mean just a handful of stinking rich tourists in LEO.
Virtually no one in civilized recorded history had that ability.
And that's a VERY good thing -- we wouldn't have technology if the excess work of the masses wasn't being aggregated by the few.
The extremely wealthy footing the cost of investment in developing the technology is why we have it. A seamstress working at home wouldn't have the resources to build a programmable loom. Orville and Wilbur wouldn't have the resources to build a DC-9. A fisherman wouldn't be able to build the QE2.
The only reason we're not hunters and gathers, doomed to extinction, is because by might or by right, the labor of the many is used by the few... and that investment trickles down over time. That's why the vast majority of the "poor" are MASSIVELY wealthy compared to a century or two ago. I mean, light after dark? The possibility of clean water? A single coarse of antibiotics would've been worth an empire 400 years ago. Shit, having a pretty decent chance of living beyond 40 would!
I am not talking about money. I am talking about resources. Stuff of actual value and use that are controlled by the plutocrats to continue the illusion of the money game. Food, water, power, shelter, network connectivity. All these things could be given to the whole world for nearly free if certain investments in the future of humanity were made, but that does not serve the short term interests of those who seek a larger slice of an ever shrinking pie.
A population of 7 billion absolutely -- by any measure -- requires the vast majority to live in poverty
What a load of crap. Will people never shut up with this Malthusian nonsense? With current technology, the 3 or 4 billion able-bodied workers can easily produce all the food, shelter, and electronic toys needed to provide an American working-class lifestyle for all 7 billion. I'd say the biggest source of waste and inefficiency is all the time and effort trying to force one another to live The One True Way.
The only real constraint on our collective standard of living is energy input, and we are currently using so very little of the available solar power (all other power sources combined are small by comparison) there's plenty of room to grow. Just by using solar thermal generation (not very efficient, but not requiring any rare ingredients either) we could produce enough power for everyone at American use levels, though we'd be pushing the limits of what we could reasonably cover with solar panels.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'm sure they will. If you've go the scratch for the ticket purchase, your reservation will be golden.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/17/aid-trade-reduce-acute-poverty
Earth has more than enough resources for 20 billion people if we were not squandering them on welfare for the non-working leaches who live off the hard work of others. Of course I am talking about the owning class of billionaire plutocrats.
No, it doesn't (currently). Not at what Western citizens would consider to be a 'average' lifestyle. It's a question of available resources, their cost and availability. There's a great book called "How Many People Can the Earth Support?" by Joel Cohen. He doesn't give a single answer, because the answer is that 'it depends', on what lifestyles people have, what resources are available to them, what those resources cost, etc. If we all ate simply (i.e. little meat) and conserved water and didn't drive cars and lived in apartment buildings and lots of other caveats, then the earth could support 20 billion, though the long term ecological effects would still need to be accounted for.
However, there simply isn't enough wood in the world to give everybody a single famly home. Before you say 'well, people could life in multi-family housing units', then you have to realize that you are changing the problem and making assumptions (and demands) about what resources people will have access to and how they are distributed. Good luck with that.
As technology changes, then the number of people that can be supported at a particular average life style will change. However, the trend is not always positive. Just look at fresh water availability; it's getting worse, not better in many places as we're using non-renewable sources (well, short- to medium-term non-renewable like lakes and aquifers).
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
You don't have to build homes out of wood.
Water is a solved problem with enough power via desalination.
You can create the entire energy usage (including industrial and transportation) of the US with a 100 mile wide patch of solar thermal plants in the Mojave with room for a century of growth. You can do the same thing in the gobi, middle east, north africa and outback for the rest of the worlds population. This requires no revolutionary new technology or exotic rare materials.
Go to a space hotel with centripetal "gravity" and 5 star food? Yeah I'm up for that.
But what I want in the short term is a fast transcontinental flight.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
For some reason I got an uneasy feeling watching the image of SS2 running on its rubber rocket engine.
Now I know what it reminded me of. That image comes with an interesting back story, it seems the Concorde did not only go down in flames because of debris on the runway.
--frank[at]unternet.org
There are some rumors that NASA already has experimented with orbital sex. Results are: 1) Sex is almost impossible without gravity. 2) It caused traumas that lead to possible infertility, and NASA stopped experimenting in this area. So, forget it.
I think this is amazing. We spoke briefly at "Rock the Kasba" and I want to start or work on a project. This would be my biggest adventure yet Sir !