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Space Tourism Isn't Worth Dying For
rudy_wayne writes with this opinion piece at Wired published in the wake of the crash of SpaceShipTwo, which calls the project nothing more than a "millionaire boondoggle thrill ride." A selection:
SpaceShipTwo is not a Federation starship. It's not a vehicle for the exploration of frontiers. Virgin Galactic is building the world's most expensive roller coaster, the aerospace version of Beluga caviar. It's a thing for rich people to do. Testing new aircraft takes a level of courage and ability beyond most humans. Those engineers and pilots are at the peak of human achievement. What they're doing is amazing. Why Virgin is doing it is not. When various corporate representatives eulogize those two pilots as pioneers who were helping to cross the Final Frontier, that should make you angry. That pilot died not for space but for a luxury service provider. His death doesn't get us closer to Mars; it just keeps rich people further away from weightlessness and a beautiful view.
Space planes will never be useful and there will only be 5 computers in the world.
Is this guy really so short sighted to believe that tourism is the only thing we could do in space? Or is this just click bait cashing in on the dead?
And why is trasporting people so much nobler than giving them a thrill? Why is dying for the cause or 'trasporting people' more acceptable than dying for 'making people's lifes happier'?
I guess your answer to "what is the meaning of life" is quite opposite to mine.
Wrong. Space planes were actually the preferred method of getting to space before the Apollo program. And the only reason we shifted to rockets was because we didn't have the time to screw with the planes.
Space planes are better if we can get them to work properly. It gets us to the upper atmosphere while spending a fraction of the fuel and getting us to a pretty good speed.
Obviously you need a form of propulsion that will work in vacuum... so the wings only take you so far. But it does effectively take care of the first stage of the rocket boost at a tiny fraction of the weight, fuel, etc. And it is reuseable which is HUGE if we're going to do a lot of launches.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
So you are arguing that the best way to design an automobile is to start with a sawmill and hope you stumble upon something useful ?
The Hierapolis sawmill was already "something useful". Most technology is developed a step at a time, and the steps are not always in a straight line. SpaceShipTwo is not itself useful to reach orbit, but it is a test for new materials, aerodynamics, and perhaps most importantly, business models. Would you prefer that rich guys spend their money on bigger yachts?