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Space Tourism, Now and to Come

Posted by kdawson on Tue Sep 05, 2006 04:41 PM
from the up-up-and-out dept.
Space
bart_scriv writes, "BusinessWeek looks at the latest in space tourism, from a $20 million Soyuz trip to a $200,000 ride via Virgin Galactic. The article looks at existing and planned opportunities, with a slide show of photos and artist's conceptions of vehicles and facilities. From the article: 'Among the other wonders of space is the planned Bigelow Aerospace space hotel. Similar in design to the International Space Station (which has kept a constant human presence in space since 2000), the hotel has a modular design that will allow it easily to expand. The key difference is that the hotel's modules will be inflatable. Bigelow Aerospace launched the Genesis I test module into orbit on July, 2006, and plans to send Genesis II in early 2007.'"
+ -
story

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[+] Inflatable Space Station Prototype a Success 73 comments
Adam Weiss writes "The Genesis 1 inflatable space station prototype was launched last week from the Ukraine. Now, after a few days of forced silence, Bigelow Aerospace has announced that the mission is so far a complete success. Their website has a detailed description of the launch, as well as the first picture from the craft. For an account right from mission control, the Museum of Science in Boston has posted an interview with Eric Haakonstad, the Program Manager of the mission."
[+] Lockheed and Bigelow to Build Space Hotel 46 comments
simonbp writes "Lockheed Martin and Bigelow Aerospace have entered into a deal to move towards the use of the Atlas V for private manned space flight ... A formal agreement between the two companies to study Atlas V feasibility for space tourism — including up to 16 launches a year — will be announced shortly. The initiative could radically transform both the 'New Space' and traditional launch marketplace... Bigelow Aerospace plans to build an orbiting hotel from inflatable modules for space tourists. The company is interested in Lockheed Martin's Atlas V to provide human and cargo transportation to their planned space station."
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  • I for one... (Score:4, Funny)

    by BlahMatt (931052) on Tuesday September 05 2006, @04:43PM (#16047960)
    am excited to be travelling through space in a large inflatable ball... what could go wrong?

  • If this price comes down to 20,000 then I'm gone! (Score:5, Funny)

    by w33t (978574) on Tuesday September 05 2006, @04:46PM (#16047978) Homepage
    Of course, my friend asked me, "Are you worried about the rocket blowing up?"

    "Not really," I said. "After all, when I kick-it I plan on having my ashes and a sample of my DNA shot into space anyhow. As long as the rocket makes it to space first, I think it would actually be a pretty good deal."

  • Space Ball! (Score:3, Funny)

    by DaveJay (133437) on Tuesday September 05 2006, @04:46PM (#16047985)
    Call me when they put a huge, inflatable arena in space, and start holding athletic events there. Somewhere between Ender's Game and Jocks In Space there's got to be a sweet spot of entertainment...

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TrippTDF (513419)
      You're being funny, but I think you might have a point there. How much money does the US spend on sporting events in a year? How many possibilities are there for weightless sports? I think once you bring your cost of launch down, this could become a sigificant revenue stream, but it's still at least 40 years away.
      • Oddly enough, I wasn't being funny, and agree with you completely, for exactly the reasons you state. :)
      • I think once you bring your cost of launch down, this could become a sigificant revenue stream, but it's still at least 40 years away.

        40 years away? People are already assembling sports leagues to compete on the weightless flights operated by the Zero Gravity Corporation [wikipedia.org]. Here's an MSNBC article, Zero-gravity sports are close to reality [msn.com]. Of course, whether or not the business plans are economically viable remains to be seen.
    • Great idea as long as we stipulate that we won't be bringing the jocks back.

    • 3 words (Score:3, Interesting)

      by RsG (809189)
      Zero. G. Porn.

      There's your 21st centure business model :-)

      Although, cleaning up afterwards would be a challenge... ...and I don't even want to think about what would happen to the instruments if they tried zero-G Bukkake :-(
      • The Barry Manilow Concert... that's a one way trip for him? Please say yes...

        They could call their promotion company Gigsssss Innnnn Spaaaaaaaace....

  • More junk to monitor (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cyphertube (62291) on Tuesday September 05 2006, @04:48PM (#16047997) Homepage Journal

    As if there wasn't enough junk to try to monitor in space and worry about falling to earth, now we're going to have private enterprise try to make a buck or two off of going to space.

    Government contractors worry me enough, but what happens to a space hotel when the business runs out of money? I can see this going through a boom and bust cycle like just about every new business, and I want to know. It's not like running lots of fiber optic cable and then going bankrupt. Who's going to take care of the degrading orbit of the hotel?

    • Sounds like an opportunity for a new business insurance industry.

    • Re:More junk to monitor (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Tackhead (54550) on Tuesday September 05 2006, @04:56PM (#16048052)
      > Government contractors worry me enough, but what happens to a space hotel when the business runs out of money? I can see this going through a boom and bust cycle like just about every new business, and I want to know. It's not like running lots of fiber optic cable and then going bankrupt. Who's going to take care of the degrading orbit of the hotel?

      Gravity.

      Interesting economic question: What's the salvage value of an abandoned ISS? If it costs $10000/lb to send something to orbit, the ISS is worth its weight in gold.

      But if you buy an abandoned space station for $1.00, and use its $10000/lb "value" to finance the building of rockets that cost $1000/lb to send fuel into orbit before your space station's orbit degrades, you've just cut the value of an abandoned hunk of metal by a factor of ten. Oops, those were also your company's assets! The bank calls your loan, and you're sunk.

      Then some other guy buys you out for pennies on the dollar, and flies your $1000/lb rockets to his space hotel, and makes a go of it.

      I suspect that much like wiring a nation with fiberoptics, the early bird gets the worm... but the second mouse gets the cheese.

      • I still don't get how you convert the ISS to its salvage value? I mean unless you can build a recycling plant in outerspace, space junk is just...space junk.
      • I'm not sure I completely understand you. The ISS might've cost $10000/lb to send there, but its value depends much more on what it can be used for rather than on its initial costs. I could send a 5 ton ball of solid shit into orbit but I doubt anybody would be willing to pay even $100 for it.
        • Actually if someone was planning on building a large (for some deffinitions of large) orbitall colony would probably pay a nice sum for your orbiting fertilizer.

          Mycroft

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by J05H (5625)
          Actually, I would buy a 5 ton ball of shit in orbit. Someday I want to grow trees in space, and that would make for some cheap fertilizer. Rednecks in Spaaaaaace!!

          On Grandparent post - every rocket launched and payload developed has specific debris-mitigation efforts. US commercial payloads must pass through AST's debris process. Debris is an issue, but it's a small step compared to regenerative life support or deep space radiation issues.

          Josh

      • The ISS is worthless. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Colin Smith (2679) on Tuesday September 05 2006, @05:57PM (#16048426)
        If it costs $10000/lb to send something to orbit, the ISS is worth its weight in gold.


        Nope. A thing is only worth what someone is willing to pay, it's costs are irrelevant. There's no such thing as intrinsic value.

        That means you have to start with... What is someone willing to pay for a week in orbit? Then ask how many people can we get into the thing, how long will it last. Then you have an approximate measure of what the ISS might be worth to a space hotel operator.

        There are no space hotel operators at the moment and nobody else really knows what to do with the thing, which means that if the ISS were abandoned tomorrow, it would literally be worthless.
         
    • Well, since it's inflatable, if it's abandoned, shuttle astronauts could just make a quick detour past it and toss a dart at it.
    • Eww! It's bad enough when bird droppings land on your head, but now we have to worry about used condoms too??
      • Sort of like William Gibson's "Red Star, Winter Orbit".
      • Are there any salvage laws yet? What is "abandoned" in space? Everything up there was at one point pretty darn valuable, just from the sheer launching costs let alone any tech it represents.

        I would imagine that once private industry is up there all the time, that "space junk" will become a valuable resource and won't be allowed to just de orbit and burn up. They'll do something with it.

  • Inflatable != fragile (Score:5, Informative)

    by FleaPlus (6935) * on Tuesday September 05 2006, @04:55PM (#16048040) Homepage Journal
    Every time there's an article about Bigelow Aerospace here, there's a dozen or so commenters who are convinced that because the modules are self-expanding, they must therefore be delicate and vulnerable to space debris. In reality however, the walls of their modules are quite durable, probably even more so the aluminum walls of the International Space Station. The walls will be composed of multiple layers of materials like kevlar (the stuff used in bullet-proof vests) and vectran, resulting in a wall 16-inches thick. They've done a number of projectile tests, with results which compare favorably to NASA's.

    • Re:Inflatable != fragile (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AKAImBatman (238306) * <akaimbatman@gm a i l . com> on Tuesday September 05 2006, @05:04PM (#16048119) Homepage Journal
      In fact everyone can now see for themselves [bigelowaerospace.com] what the Bigelow station looks like. Surprisingly, it looks a lot like just another space station. Seeing it deployed like that, it looks a heck of a lot sturdier than Slashdot impressions would lead you to believe. :)

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by sm62704 (957197)
      Every time there's an article about Bigelow Aerospace here, there's a dozen or so commenters who are convinced that because the modules are self-expanding, they must therefore be delicate and vulnerable to space debris.

      They're probably confusing them with these guys. [imdb.com]

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by otter42 (190544)
      To be specific, Bigelow Aerospace bought NASA's TransHab program [wikipedia.org]. Apparently it's all siting out in a warehouse somewhere in Las Vegas. So it's no surprise that their technology compares favorably with NASA's-- it's based on it. (I know this only because I had a long conversation yesterday with a friend who works there, designing their robots and integrating the avionics package.)

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by FleaPlus (6935) *
        As the anon coward said, by "NASA's technology" I was referring to aluminum walls, not NASA's technology in general (which includes Transhab). It's really too bad that Congress forced NASA to abandon Transhab, as it could've helped them to construct the International Space Station at a much lower cost, and probably with a larger size.

        For any readers who might be unfamiliar with Transhab, there's a rather nice history of the project, and its further development by Bigelow:

        A History of the Genesis I Private S [blogspot.com]

  • I don't considering suborbital trips to be space travel, so I'm glad they're talking about some of the real players trying to bring orbital travel to be affordable.

    My great fear is that the marketing machines are overselling suborbital "roller coasters", and when that is an abject failure, we'll see less investment in real orbital trips. Orbital is at least an order of magnitude harder than suborbital (if not more), so it's possible that some investors could be spooked away.

  • Armadillo Aerospace Test Hover Video (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Baldrson (78598) * on Tuesday September 05 2006, @04:56PM (#16048050) Homepage Journal
    WMV [armadilloaerospace.com] or MPG [armadilloaerospace.com] video just posted by John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace's test hover.

  • How High is Space? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby (173196) on Tuesday September 05 2006, @05:00PM (#16048082) Homepage Journal
    "The site's elevation 4,700 feet above sea level will also make for a shorter trip into space, saving on fuel costs."

    Isn't Earth's escape velocity constant, regardless of how far you travel to escape it? I don't see dropping off quicker with only 1 mile "head start" so much of the acceleration to escape velocity is against less weight, with constant mass requiring constant acceleration fuel.

    Wouldn't the Equator's 26 miles extra distance from the Earth's center (compared to the distance at the poles) make it an even cheaper launch site?

    Even if all these factors count, isn't Ecuador's low lattitude and high altitude the best combination? Forget a space elevator, how about just an escalator up the Andes?

    • Re:How High is Space? (Score:5, Informative)

      by paladinwannabe2 (889776) on Tuesday September 05 2006, @05:13PM (#16048171)
      No, escape velocity [wikipedia.org] is dependent on distance from the Earth. Remember that gravity gets weaker the further you are away from its source. It is slightly easier to escape from the equator than it is at the pole, so you are right that the Andes would be one of the best places to put a space elevator (or just a launch pad).
      • How did this get rated +5 informative? The difference in gravity loss between sea level and the top of the highest mountains is negligible. More correctly - escape velocity is the distance between the object and the center of the earth. The Earth's radius is about 6370km, the tallest mountains are about 6-7km high. So you are really comparing escape velocity from 6370km and from 6377km The difference in velocities is in the ten-thousanths of a percent.
    • The real benefit of high altitude launch is that rockets work much better when they don't have to work against a full atmosphere of back pressure. To throw in some real numbers, an engine I'm working on has an Isp (efficiency, basically) of 190 at sea level, but 290 in vaccuum. So a high altitude launch can decrease the amount of fuel required - and remember, rockets are normally running right on the edge of feasibility, so using less fuel is very important.

      But as you point out, you don't have a "shorter t
  • Does it come with caffeine-free diet Sprite and receive Fox news?

    Rumor also has it that Johhny Depp, John Daly and well as other rock stars/bands and athletes would have to pay a hefty deposit. "It's damn hard to replace the windows although an advantage we have over our "grounded" competition is that should such hotel trashing take place, it would be fairly quiet. What many of these stars don't understand (well besides Sigourney Weaver) is that in space, no one can hear you scream".

  • will most likely be developing a tug for moving between the moon and earth. Once bigelow gets the hotel working, it would make sense to use these for moving between the moon and earth. In fact, I would be surprised if Bigelow does not have several groups designing these at this time as well as a true lunar lander i.e. a craft that will remain in the lunar arena.
  • Does this mean we can finally send Rob Schneider off the planet?
  • Please reassure me that the Bigelow Aerospace Space Hotel does in fact come with blackjack and hookers...

  • Note to Space Hotel Recreation Director: (Score:3, Funny)

    by Locke2005 (849178) on Tuesday September 05 2006, @06:57PM (#16048756)
    Please scratch archery off of the list of possible recreational activities that guests may indulge in.

    Thank you,

    Bigelow Aerospace Management

    • The fact that these ppl have gone to orbit has caused numerous companies to really push for getting to space cheaply. I would like to see russia send up about 5 more ppl. As long as VC feels that there is money in this, then more development will occur.
      • And this make it less of a waste of $ how? So VC's are wasting more money. yippe skippie

        If you have that much to blow, you should be doing something useful. Not tossing it out the window.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by R3d M3rcury (871886)
      [...] Could have given it to me instead. Id have done something of value with it.
      True. If they'd given it to me, I'd've just spent it on blackjack and hookers.

      Actually, forget the blackjack.
    • Fucking in outer space will be quite a mess unless you like the idea of jism floating by your head

      And that'd be different from waking up in a puddle of it exactly how? Plus, it seems that it wouldn't be floating past your head, but toward the air intake.
    • You can go via Soyuz for $20 million, or you can go Virgin Galactic for $200,000. Whatever your budget, there's a space trip just for you.

      I've got twenty bucks- what'll that get me?

      A blow job. From an alien. [theregister.co.uk]

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by badboy_tw2002 (524611)
      There's a whole existing body of law around this - Oceanic law, naval law, whatever you call it. No one owns the ocean, and yet ships are represented by their respective countries, do business, have environmental impacts (oil spills come to mind) etc. Whats to stop private cruise ship companies from gouging the consumer? Fair market I guess, plus whatever regulating body the terrestrial company is owned by. And this thing will really get off the ground once Virgin, Amidillo, etc start getting craft into
        • I think at some point there's a reasonable limit to what you can claim as "viable" airspace. As for the general airspace, those are already being regulated with "spaceports" already designated in the US. (And a lot others on pacific atolls, etc). Generally they're in areas devoid of commercial air travel and population density. I don't believe that at > 100 miles anyone can still claim dominance over that particular airspace. It just isn't practicle. If a country wants to monitor launches, etc. tha

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