A Grand Day Out For British Rocketman 122
Instine writes "Salford University, in the UK, is showing an article suggesting that Britain's biggest ever rocket has been unveiled, by an academic planning a space tourism offering by 2013. 'Nova 2 qualifies as the biggest rocket ever created and flown from the UK mainland,' says Steve Bennett, Head of Salford's Space Technology Laboratory
The current offering is said to amount to 20 minutes 'flight' and 3-4 mins floating. I'm not sure how much, but I'd pay for that."
Re:Superhuman children? (Score:5, Insightful)
Eccentrics? (Score:5, Insightful)
Quoth TFA: "Steve Bennett who heads up the University's Space Technology Laboratory, will be presenting his 58ft Nova 2 rocket at the University and will discuss how his company, Starchaser Industries plans to launch it in September 2009 with the help of school pupils from across the UK."
There is something so British about that statement. I almost expected the guy to say, "well, I knocked it up in my garden shed at weekends with a friend of mine who is a keen amateur astronomer. We thought of getting some of the local schoolchildren to help out which would be good for their Scout's badges."
I miss the old country sometimes even if we are often portrayed as a nation of lovable middle-class eccentrics.
Re:Superhuman children? (Score:5, Insightful)
All this science, I don't understand.
Re:Eccentrics? (Score:5, Insightful)
I miss the old country sometimes even if we are often portrayed as a nation of lovable middle-class eccentrics.
Yet another reason the wife and I would love to move there... It's hard being a middle-class eccentric in a walmart culture.
Sheldon
Re:Headline of 2013 (Score:3, Insightful)
Excellent point.
My main problem with nearly every space tourism idea that I've seen floated is that they all want to offer you a few minutes of zero g, and charge the price of a new car, or more.
Maybe if I had a Bill Gates caliber bank account, I'd consider it. But for an average person, 4 minutes of ANYTHING, no matter how cool, just isn't worth the kind of money they're wanting to charge. Even if they throw in a smokin' hot hooker to be your seat-mate.
They need some sort of a "space hotel" to make it worthwhile. If they can't get the costs down, and it seems likely that they won't be able to, then they need to offer a substantial amount of time in space before any of these plans begin to look enticing.
We are shamefully lagging (Score:5, Insightful)
As nice as this is to see, it is shocking how far behind we are. I'm at Leicester University, and the pinnacle of British commercial rocket techology (A Skylark, a small payload sounding rocket) sits in the middle of our foyer. Meanwhile, the French with a similar sized population and a similar sized economy (and coming from a similar state of total-fucked-upness after the war) have a commercially successful 20t launcher flying regularly.
Tory fanboys perpetually bleat that what Thatcher did to our heavy industry was a necessary evil - but it wasn't necessary for the frogs and they were in as bad a state as we were in the 1970s. We voluntarily gave up our capacity to engage in any project on a larger scale than a new shopping mall.
Re:Headline of 2013 (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, air travel used to be restricted to the very well-off, too. Remember the phrase "jet set"? For that matter, there was a time when cars were basically toys for rich eccentrics. If rich people are willing to pay a bunch of money for a few minutes of thrill ride, that's great; they're essentially funding the R&D that will eventually bring the cost down to where the rest of us can afford it.