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Trouble In Branson-Land, As Would-Be Space Tourists Get Antsy Over Delays
schwit1 (797399) writes "Rumors are flying that some of the individuals who gave Virgin Galactic deposits for space tourism flights on SpaceShipTwo are demanding their money back. It appears that the most recent delay, revealed by Branson on David Letterman, is the cause." How much would you pay to go to space, if the ticket was only good starting 10 years from now? How about 20? How about, as Branson claims, if it was early next year?
It seems some are claiming they won't consider themselves astronauts if the flight doesn't go above a certain height. Given that they add nothing to the mission other than weight, I say they won't be astronauts no matter how high the flight goes...they are just...ballast.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
If you have to ask (for your money back) you can't afford it.
You would think prospective human cargo would appreciate this.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
"Some" is actually "one". Who will demand his money back if they can't make the altitude requirement, not because of delays. Other than that, everything about the summary is accurate.
Considering how huge hurdles people have to overcome every single time anything is launched into space I'd say these tourists should expect there to be lots of delays and that these delays could well last even for a few years. Once -- if ever -- space-tourism is totally trivialized we could expect delays to be minimal, but as of now I think you really should have any expectations of them being able to keep to a schedule really, really low.
As for the price to flying to space I can't really comment since I wouldn't be buying tickets at all. Maybe one day when we have colonies somewhere to actually travel to, but not as things currently are.
These stinking-rich hipsters want to get their jollies and the T-shirt without doing any of the work - like always.
That distance from Earth is necessary but not sufficient.
Funny. Slashdot now follows the lead of Private Eye as well...
"Virgin Galactic". lol. The dude's company is only proposing to launch peeps not even into orbit... up there pretty far, but not even into an orbit... and this guy calls his company "Galactic". The only thing "Galactic" about it is his ego. What a douche.
more to the point, the virgin galactic craft doesn't go anywhere. it has no destination other than downrange. so all branson is selling is a roller coaster ride. and an expensive one at that.
the russians (and soon spacex) at least have a space station as a destination.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
A roller coaster ride to 100 km. They aren't selling a destination here, but rather an experience. So it's not a problem for them.
Don't know about Vostok, and don't want to look up the other Mercury missions, but on the second manned orbital Mercury flight, Mercury-Atlas 7, the astronaut on board manually controlled the reentry due to equipment malfunction in the spacecraft. "At the retrofire event, the pitch horizon scanner malfunctioned once more, forcing Carpenter to manually control his reentry, which caused him to overshoot the planned splashdown point by 250 mi (400 km). ("The malfunction of the pitch horizon scanner circuit [a component of the automatic control system] dictated that the pilot manually control the spacecraft attitudes during this event."[8])" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Like "200km" (125mi for all you metrically challenged).
they've had a waiting list since 1968. Branson? Piker!
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Not necessarily. Early customers had to pay "only" $200k, whereas it now costs $250k for a ticket, so there was *some* advantage to getting in early.
They've been promising to have these flights into space for years now, always saying..real soon now, or next year. Then the next year comes, and the year after that, and the year after that and still no tourists going up. I call BS on the whole thing and see it as a ploy to grab people's money (from people who have more money than anyone really ought to anyhow, but that's another issue I won't get into here). Even though I don't feel sorry for those rich bastards losing their money it doesn't excuse those companies making themselves richer in the process. Worse is that anything less than at least an orbital flight is pointless anyway. All that for a few minutes in 'space' is a total waste.
First off, you're talking about a group of people that probably have more money than they know what to do with anyway. They're likely impatient and aren't accustomed to having to wait for anything.
What they likely don't realize is that they paid for something that, essentially, didn't exist yet. Would you rather they rush and blow you up? Or wait a bit and have a relatively safe ride? (Yes, I say relatively...it is inherently risky after all) They jumped at the chance to be first so they could rub it in their friends' noses.
Me? I'll never be able to afford it, unfortunately. But if I could, I'd wait until it had gone a few times. Let the bugs get worked out.
For a flight that doesn't reach orbit and stay there with the environment in 0G for at least a few orbits, I wouldn't pay anything. Heck, I won't pay a commercial airline to fly because the ratio of inconvenience to convenience+enjoyment is too high between the (id|patr)iot act's enforced paranoia and the seating designed by one-legged, one-armed engineers. Now an oceangoing cruise liner, that's something else again. I loves me a nice cruise. It's even worth going first class, which it definitely isn't in a commercial airliner.
However, for a flight that *does* go to orbit and stays a few turns, and doesn't require a spacesuit, and for which I could have a very private cubby with a view for two for the orbital duration, I might part with as much as five thousand for two seats, just for those few hours. They'd have to let me take my camera, though.
Which means I'm not going to get to go. :) Unless they build a space elevator or several in my lifetime. And apparently the materials science there is either too difficult, or nearly so. Oh well. There's always Firefly reruns.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The Virgin Galactic craft was really never meant to go anywhere, besides the imaginations of the latest batch of fools Richard Branson is looking to sucker. He'll leverage them, using them as a preface to stick his hand into the honeypot of state aerospace funding. Branson knows suckers always deserve the cruel lessons visited upon them.
Read this to understand: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n06/david-runciman/the-stuntman
I think 60 miles is pretty good for a Music Label....... ;)
But yea, if they claimed space, and then can't reach it, I'd want my money back too.
Branson states that "you go from 0 to 3500mph in 8 seconds". That's ~20g. You go first Beardie. He also states that you'll know you're in space (over 100km) because you'll float. Incorrect, you'll float because you're in free fall, even though you're not going orbital speed. It's possible to fly higher than 100km with your arse firmly stuck to your seat. Think I'll wait for the space elevator.
Will the pre-flight TSA groping be better-than-average groping? for advanced space travel, that is
You need training and evaluation to go to the ISS though, if only to make sure you don't go nuts and push all the buttons. What Virgin offers is more like a normal flight, where the damage you can do is fairly minimal and the only training needed is an annoying video.
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