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Company To Balloon Tourists To the Edge of Space For $75,000
astroengine writes "If the thought of a rocket ride to space — or the $250,000 price tag to get there — leaves you feeling queasy, an Arizona firm thinks it has a gentler, less expensive alternative. World View, an offshoot of privately owned Paragon Space Development Corp., is developing a balloon-launched, near-space (30 kilometers) ride for $75,000 — less than one-third the current cost to fly on Virgin Galactic's suborbital SpaceShipTwo. "It really is very gentle. You can be up at altitude for hours, for days for research if you need to be... I think we have the opportunity to give a really, really incredible experience to people — and for a lot less than most of what's out on the market right now," project co-founder and Paragon president Jane Poynter told Discovery News."
Nice idea but: New cancer clusters starting in. 3...2...1
http://www.epa.gov/radtown/cosmic.html
If it isn't broke, tinker with it till it is!
30Km isn't space, its only about 1/3 of the way there
I think the definition of space starts at about 100Km
you certainly couldnt achieve orbit at 30Km, you'd burn up
Sound like this just just a bunch of hot air.
To balloon - yuk
... but there's a certain economic gravity to the weightless experience.
And if so, do they provide the parachute????
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Before we can safely fly a baloon that high
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/10/20903264-two-injured-in-dramatic-accident-at-hot-air-balloon-festival-in-new-mexico
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Luxor_hot_air_balloon_crash
http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/pilot-dies-in-hot-air-balloon-accident-at-festival-outside-montreal-1.1406524
...to balloon them back to earth?
If this was yet another short-sighted commercialisation of space for the new generation of Reaganite aristocrats, it might bother me. But 30 km is barely space. Anyway, it's just another one of those companies where for nothing but ideological reasons public talent is spun off into a private corporation so a bunch of leeches can skim money off mostly government contracts.
This is not a couple of hours suborbital flight, this would probably take most of one day (or maybe more). And while it might be nice, it isn't space
Can we put all the politicians on this balloon? And then make it go into deep space?
It's only $2.50 per meter. (I assume it's free on the way down.) or $1.25 per meter (counting both ways).
I've always wondered why, if we can send balloons to the upper reaches of our atmosphere why we don't use ballooning as a 1st stage launch platform for reaching space? Granted, you'll need big balloons to life satellites or people, but surely getting stuff even 1/3rd or half way there by gentle gas lift balloon would be cheaper, easier, safer and more environmentally friendly way of launching into space. For launching people it's got to be a far less physically stressful way than strapping them to a giant firework as it pulls x number of Gees to reach high altitude and hoping it doesn't explode on the way.And far less risky for satellite launches, it a rocket fails it's a fireball, it a balloon sprouts a leak it's a slow and gentle drop with a parachute) Obviously you'll still need some form of propulsion to reach space, but until we get a space elevator it's surely a going to require far less fuel than the massive amount currently needed to get off the ground in the first place?
Hot air bags wll not get into deep space.
Just hope you don't get hit by one of those rockets on its way up, then you'll wish you had the extra $175k
Perhaps some sort of lead zeppelin would be advised?
1/2 the fun.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Just think what a belt of fat cats orbiting the earth could do.
They could reflect enough radiation to cool the earth.
It's the edge of space, so I can see them using marketing that touts the ride is "so exciting, you only need the edge."
Let than one third of the price of Virgin Galactic for less than one third the distance to space. The math seems to work out.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
The Russians used to fly you up there in a MiG for 25000$.
I remember over a decade ago in school learning that it takes X amount of energy to escape Earth and go into orbit and it takes an escape velocity of like 1000MPH to do it. Anything else would allegedly crash. Obviously if your velocity is 0.0001 miles per hour, and you're going up, and you keep doing it, you're leaving Earth eventually so that pretend law of physics was bullshit then and it's bullshit now. My teacher didn't see it that way of course.
Now they went and proved my point by simply floating off into (well, near) space with a simple density calculation and virtually no energy.
If they were to launch a satellite from a balloon instead, it'd take immensely less fuel because it's already so many miles above Earth. This also reminds me of my recommendation that a person simply make a high altitude airplane and keep going up and up and up until air-based lift doesn't work anymore and THEN turn on the rocket boosters to get into orbit with relatively little fuel/energy. That was listed as "impossible" by all the textbooks and my teacher. Ugh, I hate it when people print inaccurate blanket bullshit in textbooks.
I'd leave it at that; but Slashdot want's some text here. You could levitate to 500 miles; but if you have insufficient velocity you just fall. The balloon has almost no velocity. V2 rockets could go well past 100km into space if launched vertically; but they couldn't orbit.
Or to be even more succinct, the math shows it's a bad idea.
While the difference between $75K and $250K looks significant to many people, it actually isn't.
If you have $75G to waste on a vacation trip, then chances are you have $250G to waste also.
It's just simple statistics given that the bottom end of the top 10% of _wage_ earners is $107,000 and we all know that is far below the one percenters who don't even work for wages.
Where the market is is for older people with the money to burn but not a body that can suffer multiple Gs on take-off.
Yet another way to use up this limited resource.
... if the CEO is E.D. Lawton?
I fail to see the increased value of higher ascent. I believe that the view difference would be indiscernible, except perhaps an improvement from the nearer view. The engineering difference between vehicles informs me that the more comfortable, low-G approach would open up the possibilities for some rather luxurious amenities for the cargo.
Similarly, I think I'd prefer a hang-glider descent from Terrapin Point to a barrel ride over the Falls.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
I guess I am atypical, or at the least I am not you. When I think of "Space", I think black, silent, void. It is a location rather an event. The freefall thing is an artifact of motion, or some Newtonian thing, and the view difference is merely perspective.
I enjoy G-forces as much as the next guy, but probably wouldn't spend that much on roller coasters. When I was a youngster, I reckon I, too would have chosen a ride in the X-15 over a cruise in a balloon.
The motion deal might be tres cool, but a nearer, longer, gaze has merit as well; I'd prefer the option to take a break, pour another cold one, fire the bong, and wander back to the view port without missing anything.
The more you magnify something, the more any sort of motion is going to fuck the image, do the math. The difference between 30 and 100 Km is more profound, perspective-wise, than 100 and 400 Km, but you wouldn't get very much out of it view-wise, not to mention time-wise. SpaceShipTwo is not the ISS. I also think it would be pretty much more a "totally" than "nearly" black sky at 30Km, but I haven't been there.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Okay, may I suggest you completely geek out in your nerdliness and go visit your natural state of freefall off a cliff or "something" much more cheaply then?
Depending on your orientation a buttplug might also help.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.