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Space

Space Tourism 71

Posted by michael from the you-must-be-this-high-to-ride-the-rocket dept.
Nevyan writes: "A conglomeration of Japanese firms plan on making space flight available to the general public. Cost: $26,000. Duration: 3 hours. Training: even a monkey (or a politician) could do it..."
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Space Tourism

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  • Oops. I should have been more clear. The technology to get people sized objects into space for under $25,000 exists now. Obviously when talking about taking real, living, breathing people into space, issues such as life support tend to become kind of important. With regard to take people in 2016 for *holidays*. Personally I think it will happen much earlier than this, 2010 sounds perfectly possible to me. I actually think 2016 is terminally under ambitious as a timescale.

    One other thing I did not consider earlier. The $26,000 being touted, could be easily affordable if they stick with the 2016 timescale. With the economy going the way it is.


  • >what chance does a desk-jockey like me have of keeping it where it belongs?

    By not eating or eating very little before and during the flight.

    Yeah, but I'd still manage to find something to insert into the environment - even if I'd starved myself for a week :)

    Of course, I'd be loving it - if it's anything like aerobatics & roller-coasters, I'll be smiling even if I do hurl! :)

  • Wouldn't it be less than $25k for non-human payloads? After all, you don't have to factor in the cost of a 160 pound sack of potatoes in a $50 million negligence lawsuit after the rocket explodes. Then again, those potatoes were a family heirloom...
  • I really do hope that they'll succeed in making one. I imagine that it could be converted to launch satellites and that would really reduce the cost of launching objects (not necesserily satellites) into space. A reusable rocket is probably one of the first steps needed for the future colonization of space.

    It will be interesting to see if they meet their goal of building a prototype in 2004. Contrast this with NASAs X33 which was supposed to have launched over a year ago now, and has still yet to be built.

  • Despite the fact that huge risks are involved in sending someone off into space (and not all have to do with poor engineering. Two cases I can think of are the ever-famous "Titanic" earlier last century, and the "Challenger" mission),

    the cost charged to a civilian sending himself into space (I remember seeing this on a Discovery channel special) was at or above $1 million.
  • Well, the service personel would have to be trained differently, but the functions of passengers on a bus/plane is about the same as their luggage.
    They board the bus/plane, sit there until it's over, and then egress. I don't see how a passenger of a space-flight would be any different.
    All of the regulations for planes mainly refer to the maintanance of the hardware, the pilots and the service personel.

    --

  • Pioneers, NOT tourists! (Score:3)

    by IronDragon ( 74186 ) on Saturday January 06, 2001 @05:34AM (#527005) Homepage
    This will never get anywhere. Oogling at the earth from 50 miles up will not accomplish any long term goals.

    There is a commonly held belief that space travel will always be expensive. This doesnt have to be the case. If there existed a space infrastructure, you could reduce the complexity of the launch vehicle to the point where its _only_ carrying up the human cargo. Food, oxygen, and etcetra could be availible in orbit. Rocket fuel costs a bit less than milk per gallon. It wont always be prohibitvely expensive to get into orbit.

    What we really need is to establish an industrial infrastructure in space. This means mining the moon and Near Earth Asteroids. The vehicles, equipment, and perhaps even the crew for further projects out in space will need to come from a lunar base, or something similar.

    Some possible benefits of space-based manufacturing:

    - Satellite launches will cost thosands of times less.

    - Satellites can be much larger, since the weight constraints from our gravity well are no longer a limiting factor.

    - The moon and metallic asteroids are incredibly rich in minerals. Some of the Apollo samples were 6% platinum. Another compound found on the moon is Illmenite - TiFeO2.

    Launching from the earth is an extremely wasteful venture. Even more wasteful if we spend it on 'tourist' missions. I seriously dont think that the cost of putting people into orbital joyrides will turn enough profit to fund an infrastructure-building mission. Mabye, but is that their intention? Or is the next project a 'space hotel', virtual reality mars tour, or somethig equally pointless?

    I fear that someday we will reach a point where socioecononmic factors, public interest, and earth-based resources reach a point where large missions involving human launches would become an impossibility for public and private enterprise, left only to NASA or the ESA.

    :/

  • hidden benefits (Score:3)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Saturday January 06, 2001 @07:31AM (#527006) Journal
    Well, with costs like this, only certain executives would generally be able to afford this.

    Maybe this should be promoted to those "favorite" pointy haired executives. Then, if it goes "boom", there is still not a problem

    Although there is the anecdotal effect of people being out in space and actually having the time to enjoy it, looking out the window, etc. It changes their viewpoint somehow, for the better. Many astronauts have attested to this

    All the mystical mumbo jumbo aside, this would probably be good for the planet and culture and politics in the long run.

    There is probably a whole series of articles and stories that could be down on the mental/emotional impact of space travel on people. It is one of those things whose consequences would not be easily forseen.

  • There is such technology already ? Then why aren't we using it ? I think because it's only theoretical.
    The article even mentions they aren't sure how to reuse the rockets.. that seems like a key issue for the economy of the project.
    As far as the global economy goes.. 26K it's only a translation, they were talking about Yen, and in any case I don't think that value includes economy prediction for year 2016.

    bau
  • That'd actually be fairly difficult, and you'd probably wear yourself out before you finished anyway.
    The USAF (I think) did a lot of research on life in space for their Project Orion (A giant spacecraft propelled by nuculear bombs). One of the areas was that for inter-stellar travel, the mission would last more the a generation, so there obviously had to be sex to continue the mission.
    What they came up with was that the two 'participants' would be in a nautilus-shaped room where as they progressed in the room, the walls would get closer together, and well... you know.

    --
  • There's only one major spacecraft I can think of that uses solid propellant anymore, the SRB's of the Space Shuttle, and they're trying to get rid of them too.
    They're going to be replaced by Liquid Flyback Boosters. I don't have a link, but you could do a search at spaceflight.nasa.gov [nasa.gov].

    --
  • You can rent a vomit comet in Russia and the
    USA for a weightless ride now.
    But everyone whos been in space says the earth
    view is most fantastic part.

  • Ah, but there could be positive implications if we apply it properly to politicians.

  • $25k is the price it can be done for now for non human payloads. Currently human payloads cost a lot more than that. So by 2016, non human payloads should be very cheap to ferry into space.

    For me, that is what is interesting about this story. Not that in 15 years I can spend a few hours in space.

  • Im rather worried that they mention monkeys. If I remember correctly the sucess rate for monkeys being sent into space and returning safely is not great.

  • Given my experience with funding in science, a scientiest would be much more likely to fly economy class ... and if he was Austrian, he would have to pay the return flight himself ...
  • Your damn right I am damn you slashdot for making me post here without having a quad venti cappucino!!!!! Aren't you glad I'm not your accountant though ;) admit it admit it damnit

  • Okay I'm not really all for this. Really all that money to fly into space for three hours. Alcoholic binges have the same effect. Here's my idea though. Lets shoot all of our Social Security dependent senior citizens into space for the name of science? Think of it. We can answer all those hard questions, like would a buick make a good space pod and how long does aluminum foil last as it gets closer to the sun.


    Anyone that can spend all that money and go through the training for three hours? I have to ask who's smoking the good crack for this scheme. My idea would combine the overgrowing budget for social security with the name of science. We'll get so much more for our dollar in this case. Think of it like this, we wouldn't have to train them for potential problems, think of the benefits of not having to worry about bringing back our astronauts?


    Houston, we have a problem
    Roger that Grandpa One, we're rooting for you

    So if you have this kind of money just laying around and you've wanted to be an astronaut, and want to strap yourself to a 3 story tall flaming bomb, go for it. You wreck it you buy it.


    - Its not the fall that kills you, its the sudden stop -


    Enhancedtrance [slashdot.org]

  • Re:Public Space Trips (Score:5)

    by ZanshinWedge ( 193324 ) on Saturday January 06, 2001 @05:53AM (#527017)
    What happens when something goes really wrong in some 3rd world country where you're more likely to die of an infection at the hospital than get proper treatment? What happens in Antarctica when something goes wrong? What happens when you're on a sailboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? Or on Mt. Everest? There is an approx. $7,000 fee per person just to have the priveledge of climbing Mt. Everest and it presumably costs a hefty chunk of cash to get the equipment and proper training and guides as well. Yet, on average over 100 people climb (successfully) Mt. Everest every year. On average about 5 people die on Mt. Everest every year, in 1996 15 people died on Mt. Everest, since 1975 129 people have died on Mt. Everest.

    Sure, space is dangerous, but there are lot's of things that are dangerous that we still "let" people do, and as long as people know what they are getting into we shouldn't stand in their way.

  • Wow, according to the article, 26k is 3 months pay (or less) for 70% of the Japanese. I'm moving.

    So is this ship going anywhere, or just going up and coming back? Wasn't Alan Shepard's first flight something like a couple hours? I can see this possibly be a really fast flight from Tokyo to L.A. or San Francisco. But just going for a 3 hour tour of near space doesn't seem really productive. Of course, getting the shuttles back to the launch point could prove a problem.

    This article does not seem very well researched. They didn't even mention that Tito is now going to the ISS [slashdot.org]. Plus, 26k now is going to be how much in 2016? I think I'd better start saving now.
  • We can now truely have Geeks in Space [thesync.com], but the production costs just went through the roof.
  • If even the gung-ho "Right Stuff" guys puked, what chance does a desk-jockey like me have of keeping it where it belongs?

    Face it, the majority of the passengers will hurl. Just as with cruise ships, there'll be lots of "patches" behind the ears... it's what most people do in microgravity, and I think we won't change people, we'll just drug 'em.

    There will be accidents, there will be deaths and some people may try to go legal.

    There's actually a good model for this: skydiving. Go out to the local dropzone and sign up for a first-jump course: you'll sign a waiver which basically says you understand you might die, and that's your tough luck... These waivers regularly hold up in court, in part because few people are stupid enough to believe there's no risk, and they've been thoroughly warned that there is.

    The other thing which helps is that there's rarely insurance, which prevents the development of a "deep pocket" for the lawyers to feed on. The Japanese might be relatively safe, since the lawsuits might have to be in their courts (as opposed to US courts, which are certifiably insane).

    ---

  • I have no idea.
    I just remembered that part because it was one of the more 'interesting' research topics they had on the project.

    --
  • I'm afraid I don't see the point.

    Wow. So, how long have you been soul-dead?

    ---

  • 3 hour tour? (Score:4)

    by dxkelly ( 11295 ) on Saturday January 06, 2001 @09:27AM (#527023) Homepage
    I know better then to go on one of those. :-)
  • Firstly I think there is a good chance liquid fuels-which are the major danger with space vehicles-will not be used for taking people into space.
    Do you mean solid fuels?

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

  • after all how many people have 26k to drop for a few hours joy?
    People pay in excess of 26k$ for cars. I'd rather drive a rusty old Toyota for 5k$ and spend 26k$ on a space flight (even three hours) than pay 31k$ for a BMW or whatever. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

  • I fear that someday we will reach a point where socioecononmic factors, public interest, and earth-based resources reach a point where large missions involving human launches would become an impossibility for public and private enterprise, left only to NASA or the ESA.

    What do you mean, someday? This is the present reality.

  • How about when people only get a little training, and things Go Really Wrong (TM) out in space? What in the world can tourists do then? Is the world really ready for this?

  • Re:Public Space Trips (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yeah, and what about first post ?
  • The article actually says that no training is required, all you need to do is turn up and check in. So is it really any different than travelling on a commerical airline? Does put a whole new perspective on the Space Beer story posted a while back though.
  • Dear christ... Do we worry about making sure peopel have training when they get on a bus, or in an airplane? You don't need special training to be a passenger on a flight, no matter how high it gets. If things Go Really Wrong(TM), then everyone dies, most likely. Either the people who are trained to fix it do so, or everyone dies.
  • No.

    Incidentally, was the fp for this article the first ever serious fp in /. history? Congrats to the author. My faith in the fundamental goodness of human nature and the prospect of a better future for us all has been restored.

  • The flight attendants will need to have large nets on hand, for reining in the results of several weightlessness-sick passengers. Ugh!
  • Posted by PartA:

    At $26,000/3 hours, I'm sure this would be much more affordable than a visit to the space station, and for people who fly on the concords, it's not much more expensive than one of their business trips. =)
  • If it weren't for the high risk involved with space flight, this would be the ultimate 'team building' experience for bored SillyValley dwellers. After all, what better place to really get to know your coworkers than in outer space?

    Shame this will never happen, though. No exec would be willing to explain why he just lost the entire engineering department in an unfortunate launch mishap...

  • Tourists can't do anything, and if you've been paying attention, much of the time experts can't do anything either.

    One doesn't need to understand how a vehicle works to ride a bus. One doesn't need to know how a plane works to fly in a plane. One doesn't need to know how a space shuttle works to go into space.

    -- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!

  • 26,000$ in 3 hours are only...
    (ticckle tackle on my pocket calculator)...

    144 $ per minute...

    ok... may i look for only 5 minutes and keep my eyes closed for the remaining time of the flight? :)
  • Yes, but three hours stuck in a plane. Okay, so the view would be excellent (too bad if you don't get a windo seat), as would the weightlessness, but apart from the "wow" factor, I'm afraid I don't see the point.

    Still, as pointed out, people fly the Concorde for the novelty, so maybe there will be a good take-up of this.

  • Except for the fact that passengers on airplanes and other forms of mass transit are usually at the same level as their luggage (IE: cargo).

  • Huh? I thought the current price was around $10k/pound. Which is nowhere near the $160/pound they're saying. NASA's reusable launch vehicle efforts, some of which have failed and some of which are still ongoing are merely aiming to lower the cost to $1000/pound. Something all these launch schemes have in common is that they seem to have some technology none of the rest of us know about, or they love throwing money away giving people rides in space for less than they cost.
    I especially love it when companies start taking reservations before they have a working launch system. It should be the other way around. I was personally stoked about Rotary Rocket, they had some good tech and weren't overmarketed. Someone needs to bail them out.
  • What this demonstrates is the ever decreasing cost of space travel.

    And think about the know-how they gain by shooting people in space. It's the first step. Maybe we could soon fly to moon for about EUR 10000.

    And imagine a scientiest flying to the ISS in the business-class of such a tansporter instead of the regular space shuttle. :-)

  • He would have know that if he read the article. Of course the FP pressures made him troll.

    And it appears to have worked.

  • Likely To Happen With Such A Long Wait :) (Score:5)

    by grantdh ( 72401 ) on Saturday January 06, 2001 @04:34AM (#527042) Homepage Journal
    To get away with something like this, there are a large number of issues to address over & above the whole "We've never done this before" thing (don't forget, the Japanese have an excellent track record at taking what others have done and making it better). Lets see:

    Just turn up, pay & fly:
    Hmmm - no massive acceleration or there'd be coronaries galore ("Did you pack your bags? Have you had your shots? Are you fit for massive amounts of acceleration?" :)

    I don't even want to think about the whole space sickness thing - are they going to spin/keep thrusting/etc to keep everyone's stomachs down? If even the gung-ho "Right Stuff" guys puked, what chance does a desk-jockey like me have of keeping it where it belongs?

    Shirt sleeve environment:
    OK, lots of nifty technology issues to address to ensure that everyone gets a window with enough viewing space, etc (anyone remember the Comet aircraft - it had a nasty habit of braking up in flight due to stress cracks around the square windows in the fuselage)

    $26,000 fare:
    Hell - I'd pay it, no problems (so I mortgage my soul again - what the hell :) It's basically for those with senior positions, family money, lotteries or serious desire + the guts to save. It'll probably be closer to $100k by the time it gets there, but anyhow - the equivalent right now is good for evaluation...

    Given the accelaration & environment issues, there's lots of work required on propulsion and materials issues. Fortunately there's lots of research happening here, provided funding remains.

    Tourists in space will happen, it's just a matter of time. It didn't happen by the 90's as predicted in the 60's. It may not happen by 2016 as predicted now, but it will happen. Of course, it will require some very long-term planning people with the balls to fund an expensive programme with a very long term pay off (once it's cheap to get people & things into space, space can start to pay off).

    There will be accidents, there will be deaths and some people may try to go legal. Like the early days of aviation, each safely completed trip and each pile of twisted remains (or cloud of atoms/molecules/bits) will teach us more. Eventually, we'll get it right. If it were available right now, I'd do it in a flash.

    The concept is good. The hype is crap. Maybe these guys can pull it off - probably they can't. At least they're trying!

  • But there are slightly more regulations and more experience regarding safety with buses and air planes than there is with space travel. You can't compare space travel with riding a bus, imho.
  • This will never get anywhere. Oogling at the earth from 50 miles up will not accomplish any long term goals.

    I disagree. While it doesn't directly accomplish your longterm goals (which I share, very enthusiastically!), it does help create both the infrastructure for space travel, and more importantly it creates an image of the possibility and the desirability of space travel.

    I think these are all great things, and I wholeheartedly support space tourism because of it. (Just keep 'em out of the way of the serious folks, please... ;)

    ---

  • Why would someone even take the chance here when clearly they're stating they acknowledge issues surrounding their space projects.

    They're not proposing they do it tomorrow; one might presume that in a decade or two they could acquire the necessary knowledge to do it better... after all, the US and USSR both had plenty of problems in their early days, but overcame them.

    ---

  • say tesserae, send me a mail if youd like to ramble about possible 'space infrastructure building strategies' :)

    irondragon@gci.net
  • Homer Simpsons said it best... "The only danger is if they send us to that terrible Planet of the apes. Wait a minute... Statue of Liberty...that was our planet! You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!"
  • (*) Assuming an average person weighs about 150 pounds, and carries no additional weight, this launch cost translates to about $170/pound.

    (*) The current cost per pound is about $5,000 per pound (See this excellent National Academy of Sciences Report [nap.edu]). Assuming no improvement in launch technologies, the launch cost for a typical person would be more like $1 Million.

    (*) According the the same NAS report, the cost may go down to hundreds of dollars by 2020. This improvement would be necessary to get the ticket price down into the range suggested. However, the report emphasizes that revolutionary breakthroughs are needed.

    Note that if the only purpose of these launches would be to ferry civilians into space, the gross amount of revenue per launch, at $26,000 a head, would be only about $1 M total for all 50 passengers. This is comparable (to within a factor a few) of the gross amount of revenue of a single large overseas jet flight. However, there are a LOT, LOT more people able to pay about $500 - $1,000 for such a flight than $26,000 for a space flight, even if revolutionary breakthroughs happen. With none of the enormous research and development involved, the ordinary overseas airline business is a much better business to be in. This is basically the same reason why supersonic airline travel is still today no more commonplace than twenty years ago, and why the next generation of SST jets have been largely orphaned in the research phase.

    Bob

  • A space station? Naah, we've had a couple of those before, and now we've even got a really freaking expensive space station. I don't see the final frontier opening wide up yet, do you?

    How about probes to the moon and NEO asteroids, to give us some prospector-impressive data? No, wait, NASA's already doing that, we already know there's a hell of a lot of valuable minerals out there, but nobody wants to get them.

    So why does nobody want to get them? Because if there were pure gold to be scooped up in Low Earth Orbit a Space Shuttle flight that filled it's cargo bay with the stuff would lose money.

    The infrastructure we need isn't mining equipment; we know how to make mining equipment. What we need is a cheap way of getting it off the ground!

    And if you haven't done the math yet, this Kanko-Maru project is looking at trips to orbit for $1,000,000 a flight. That's about a thousandth of the cost (with development costs accounted for, as they would have to be in a commercial venture) of a Shuttle flight, with a fifth of the payload. On a rocket that's still human-rated for safety, and would be a proof of concept for a fully reusable launch vehicle.

    I defy you to name any sort of infrastructure we could develop that would be more valuable than that.

    Here's hoping they do it, this time. "Kanko-Maru" is the name of a decades-old idea that (AFAIK) never got the funding to be tried, and it's technically not much different from the Phoenix idea that Gary Hudson was pushing before the Roton. Of course, Hudson had a few small financers who could put up half the cash he needed; the article here is claiming Kanko-Maru has Mitsubishi, Fujitsu, Sharp, and Nissan.
  • Besides manned space flight, well, an orbital rocket is obviously also a suborbital rocket, with a little more payload or a little less fuel expenditure.

    Kanko-Maru Parcel Service: For when it absolutely has to be in Tokyo by lunchtime.
  • The space station we have up right now? pfft :) I seem to recall some science fiction author commenting on the ISS - saying that we should have 20 of them up there by now.

    So why does nobody want to get them? Because if there were pure gold to be scooped up in Low Earth Orbit a Space Shuttle flight that filled it's cargo bay with the stuff would lose money.


    A bucket of dirt in low earth orbit would be worth as much as a bucket of gold on the ground - because thats how much it would cost to put it up there!. heh. I do believe that there are more efficient ways than the space shuttle for heavy lifting - so it doesnt necessarily have to cost that much for payload weight. Btw, taking material DOWN from orbit would seem just insane. Not to mention landing an orbiter with a full cargo bay of gold.. hehe.

    Even if space tourism has the potential to get people interested in space travel, i think its an awfully expensive way to do it :/

  • If that is your real name. I believe we still have something called the swimsuit competition!

    --
  • What this demonstrates is the ever decreasing cost of space travel. The price is obviously way beyond the reach of most people, but compared to what it would have cost to do the same thing 5 years ago this represents a dramatic price reduction. It is now possible to get a human into space for under $25,000, or to look at it another way. It is now possible to get something weighing the same as a human into space for under $25,000. The ever decreasing cost of getting carrying payloads into space will make satellite launches much less costly than they are, which paves the way for all kinds of interesting things.

  • Others have claimed the same thing before and everyone is quick to push gimmicks and dreams. There was recently a company who now offers 'mile high flights'. Where for a few hours they'll take you up in the sky to get your jolly's off.

    Wonder what they're going to do when things become erratic in outer space like with what happened on British Airways when someone wants to crash a shuttle. How much would insurance cost in the case of a meteor shower, where will the pilots be trained (hopefully there won't be any from the crew who launched those mars probes else you may never see your grandma again).

    26k for a novelty flight is a bit steep and I doub't they'd be able to recoup much monies spent on advertising through customers, after all how many people have 26k to drop for a few hours joy?

    Firestone Tire Spoof [antioffline.com]

  • Political incorrectness (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Training: even a monkey (or a politician) could do it..."

    HEY!! Stop insulting monkeys!

  • More interesting Civilians In Space :-) (Score:4)

    by Natalie's Hot Grits ( 241348 ) on Saturday January 06, 2001 @03:16AM (#527056) Homepage
    For what its worth, here are some decent sites containing current NASA and other country's position, and progress on civilian space travel:

    http://www.reston.com/nasa/tourism.html [reston.com]
    http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/general_public_ space_travel_and_tourism_volume_2.shtml [spacefuture.com]
    http://www.nss.org/alerts/releases/release36.html [nss.org]
    http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/space/civilian_space_ travel/ [yahoo.com]

    MODS: Don't mod me because of age/sex/religion/creed/color/name. If you must criticise, please post contstructively rather than zealously. thanks
  • Not so fast !


  • When you consider that first class plane tickets for a couple departing from Montreal(YUL) to Sydney(SYD) cost between 30k - 45k CAN. Check out Expedia [expedia.com] for details.

    26k USD to go in space seems like a bargain to me!
  • YEs my friend, for only 26,000 you can spend 3 hours of weightlessness, and be sick all over the place!!
    really, almost every astronaught that goes up gets spacesick, sometimes for a whole day or more.
  • "Our country certainly lacks knowledge of manned flight technology," said Yoshifumi Inatani, an associate professor at Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science.

    Why would someone even take the chance here when clearly they're stating they acknowledge issues surrounding their space projects.

    Last November, the National Space Development Agency of Japan was forced to explode a H-2 rocket and satellite by remote control when it veered off course after lift-off.

    The consolation was that it was unmanned.

    Now lets do the math 25k x 50 is only about 130k per flight which means at that rate the 628 million (U.S.) would be paid in upteen years. Sounds like a plan I guess they're probably gonna have flatscreens with Doubleclick banners on the way up.

    No space suits needed [antioffline.com]
  • I'm lucky, I actually work with a few woman, but none that I would care to have sex with.

    Most /.'ers work in sausgae factories, if ya know hwat I mean.
  • Here's another space tourism site run by some UVA graduates and endorsed by several astronauts. Space Adventures [spaceadventures.com]
  • I would like to ask the moderators to please mod this up. This is the first time I've seen a serious first post. We need to set examples! :)
  • Don't get me wrong, going into space is cool, but for $26K I'd like a bit more than just a fancy plane ride. I guess I'm just one of those whining "how can you waste money on such a pointless exercise when there are people starving?" bores. Apologies for the inconvenience and waste of electrons. :-)
  • If memory serves correctly, I believe there was a "round the world trip in less than 36 hours" on the Concorde about ten years ago (maybe more). Also, people paid a fair bit of money just to be on a 747 over the South Pole at the stroke of midnight on 31/12/99. So yes, I think there is a novelty factor associated with air travel (still).

    But yes, I do get your point, although unless I was crossing the pond on a regular basis, I think I'd just fly subsonic in business class.

  • Face it, the majority of the passengers will hurl. Just as with cruise ships, there'll be lots of "patches" behind the ears...

    But space sickness isn't the same as ordinary motion sickness, so if it had been this easy, the Japanese journalist would certainly have done something else during his week.

    I'd also like to comment that the article seems pretty hazy on the economical side of this, so I wouldn't take the ticket price seriously.

  • Scuse me, are you human? ;-) Cos humans have a long and dignified history of doing stuff just for the hell of it, not just to meet long-term goals. Where d'you think Our Favourite Operating System (tm) came from? cos it certainly wasn't a long-term goal. Ditto sendmail and zillions of other projects.

    Anyway, the way this will pay off is to get investment in space research. Take the example of the early car - it was slower than a carriage (and _much_ slower than a post-coach) and broke down often, but the ultra-rich bought them as toys. 10 years on (1900s) they were about fast enough to match a horse. 20 years on from that (1920s), and everyone down to the lower-middle-class could afford them. 30 years on from that (1950s), and anyone could afford one.

    Is this irrelevant? Well, the continuing development of petrol (and diesel) engines brought a whole new way of doing things to the construction, mining and farming industries. None of this development was paid for by those industries, it was adapted from technology used to build cars for consumers, and the consumers buying those cars were therefore funding the technology improvements which were passed on to those industries.

    Now consider space. ATM there's not much investment. Companies are starting to look at space, but there's so much investment required that they're (quite rightly) not prepared to divert funds to it. But a company set up to supply the ultra-rich with space flights for fun ("toys") could produce an achievable first-draft space travel service - and likely produce it cost-effectively since they aren't beholden to air force types who want the glamour of a Space Shuttle over the practicality of a rocket, for example. They'll find out stuff from the first few trips and produce better versions and cheaper ways to power it, and the cost will come down - as an example, the reason it's so expensive to get up there is that you have to carry all your fuel, so there's already research being done on powering a first-stage boost from the ground where energy's cheaper. Meantime, the technology improvements will make possible cheaper expeditions to do your space-mining in the same way that the Benz three-wheeler made the tractor and the JCB possible.

    Grab.
  • Visionless people like yourself will be the death of humanity. I would glady pay any amount of money just to have the *experience* of leaving earth just once. There doesn't need to be any "point", doing it is reason enough.


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  • Actually this will not be as risky as you may believe. Given that what is talked about in the article is not going to be available for a number of years yet, it is likely that the method of transportation will be quite a bit different than what you may currently associate with space travel.

    Firstly I think there is a good chance liquid fuels-which are the major danger with space vehicles-will not be used for taking people into space. More likely, the *space plane* will have 2 different engines.

    The first engine will take the space plane high into the Earth's atmosphere. The second will then kick in giving the space plane sufficent thrust to reach escape velocity, and taking to space plane out of our atmosphere.

    This 2 stage approach lessen the big boom risk considerably. It also allows for the *space plane* to use more established, cheaper technology, as most of the assent is handled by standard jet engines, albeit with modifications.

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