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Some Virgin Galactic Customers Demand Money Back
schwit1 (797399) writes News reports suggest that — following last week's SpaceShipTwo crash — more than thirty of the seven hundred people who placed deposits with Virgin Galactic to fly on SpaceshipTwo have pulled out, demanding their money back. "In response to the claim that more than 30 customers are considering their position in the aftermath of the crash, a spokesperson for Virgin Galactic admitted a number of people have asked for their money back. 'We can confirm that less than three per cent of people have requested refunds,' the spokesman said." This is not a surprise, nor should it be. A company can only survive a crisis like this by responding honestly, quickly, and directly. If Virgin Galactic does this, finding the cause of the crash and fixing it, they will likely hold onto most of their customers. If they don't, those remaining customers will leave. This week's cancellations are the first immediate response to the crash. The future of the company, however, will be determined by what happens in the next six months.
I wonder if some of these folks were already regretting their decision to tie up money in a space flight. People's finances change, life situations change, priorities change... and this is a convenient way to try to get out of the financial obligation.
No evidence on my part... just idle speculation.
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I could accept a 5% risk of death if I was doing something worthwhile: contributing to science or the colonization of Mars. But for a joy ride? Even if it's an order of magnitude better, a 5 in 1000 chance in death is still pretty high. That's a couple of orders of magnitude riskier than skydiving (0.0007%) or driving 10,000 miles. (0.0167%)
It's more likely they were looking to get their money back in any case, but now they've got a possible legal angle to invalidate the contracts. I wonder what the smallprint says.
Larger than Columbus thought. The consensus among the experts, going back to Eratosthenes, was pretty much right on the money. Columbus was the only one who thought it was smaller (much smaller, by 2/3), which is why he was rejected by the Portuguese king. I don't know how he managed to convince the Spanish monarchs to fund his expedition, but if he hadn't gotten very lucky, he would indeed have killed his crew.