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Virgin Galactic Passengers May Just Miss Going into Space
DavidGilbert99 (2607235) writes "According to the customer contract those signing up for a $240,000 flight on Virgin Galactic's spaceship the company will bring you 'at least 50 miles' above sea level. The problem is that the internationally accepted boundary for outer space is 62 miles above sea level — known as the Karman Line. Virgin is trying to get around the issue by claiming it is using a definition of space used by NASA — in the 1960s."
As long as I was weightless, I wouldn't care.
If all you want is to be weightless, the Vomit Comet is a much cheaper alternative for about $5,000.
If you are paying the $245,000 premium, I would think they would want to get the official astronaut status of 62 miles.
The 62-mile internationally-accepted boundary is a completely arbitrary artifact of the metric system. It happens to be a nice, even 100 kilometers. There is nothing physically distinct about hitting 100 kilometers that makes it become "space". NASA previously defined it as 50 miles because they also wanted a nice even-sounding number and they were using imperial units to express it. I agree that if I got into a rocket, blasted off, saw the curvature of the earth and the blackness of space (and felt weightlessness for an appreciable period of time), I would say I have been to space, whether it meets the internationally-accepted definition or not.