John Carmack To Cut Space Tourism Prices 50%

An anonymous reader writes "Looks like John Carmack, through Armadillo Aerospace, will be battling Burt Rutan and Richard Branson to make space travel affordable. From the article: 'Space Adventures is going to use an Armadillo Technologies rocket to launch amateur astronauts 62 miles into the sky. Nothing new, except that they will do it at half the price of Virgin Galactic's ticket, and in a real rocket!' Perhaps I'll visit space, after all."

Half of 200k is still 100k

[Meshach]

This is still out of the price range of most of the population for a vacation.

Re:Half of 200k is still 100k

[QuantumG]

Do people still need the "early adopter" concept explained to them? We live in a technological society where new gadgets and experiences come onto the market all the time. The early adopters pay top dollar for them, this attracts competitors, and the price starts to drop.

Re:Half of 200k is still 100k

[rolfwind]

Do people still need the "early adopter" concept explained to them?

Jump in early and get burned? I hope it's not literally in this case... somehow I'd wait and have the rockets perfected by experience first...

Re:Just a thought

[MichaelSmith]

Doesn't Mark Shuttleworth feel like a sucker now?

No, because Mark went into orbit in a fair dinkum Russian spacecraft, which he got to fly (partly) himself. The vehicle being discussed here won't go into orbit.

Re:Half of 200k is still 100k

[Shark]

Well, it's nice to see that competition in a market can drive prices down. Now the trick is to prevent them from forming a cartel.

Re:Half of 200k is still 100k

[oldspewey]

Even it it were a hundred bucks, 5 minutes isn't a vacation ... at best it's a quickie.

price, time, early adopter risk, and risk of death

[bcrowell]

I'm not rich (I'm a community college professor), but this is a price I could afford if I made it a priority in my life and planned my finances around it. Some people who make the same amount of money I do make it a priority to own a car that costs roughly this much.

Arguments against:

1. It's $100,000 for 5 minutes of entertainment.
2. Related to point #1, it's possible that in 10 more years, you'd be able to pay the same amount of money to spend a week in space. A week in space would be a lot more fun. This is one of those risks you have to worry about when you're an early adopter: maybe with hindsight you'll have bought at the wrong time.
3. It's probably impossible to quantify the risk of death. The risk would probably be considerably higher than the risk associated with a space shuttle launch and reentry ... which is actually quite high.

Re:It'll never get that low.

[beernutmark]

Yeah, we should make sure it is deregulated. It worked out great for us re the financial sector and oil industries!

Re:and they still make a big markup/ profit

[Abcd1234]

it makes you wonder about nasa prices for each missions... and also wonder why this has not happened before

Well, given Carmack's proposal isn't even in the same league as the average shuttle launch, I suspect the cost differential is pretty understandable. After all, last I checked, NASA didn't bother with piddly little missions to send people just barely past the boundary of space (which is 62 mi/100 km) and then immediately bring them right back again. The delta between that and a real orbital mission is massive.

No, this is but a very tiny step toward real, commercial spaceflight. And the step from this to real commercial space flight is much much larger.

Re:It'll never get that low.

[zach_the_lizard]

If you think those industries are unregulated, then I would like to see what you consider to be regulated. I mean, once you have governmental control over the money supply, how much a bank can and cannot loan, etc., it becomes pretty hard to call it unregulated. Poorly regulated, perhaps, but not at all left to its own devices.

Re:It ain't space below 7km/s

[BiggerBoat]

It ain't space below 7km/s

Hmm, I guess Alan Shepard wasn't the first American in space after all (considering Freedom 7 had a suborbital trajectory, and had a max velocity of well below 7km/s).

Re:and they still make a big markup/ profit

[networkBoy]

which, to come full circle, they likely would not have done without the assurance that they would not lose money trying to. Thus NASA still is the source for all this neat stuff. And while it was made by an NGO, it was made under contract to a GO, thus is PD.
-nB

Re:Half of 200k is still 100k

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. I mean WOW. Are you really 'disgusted' by people who don't make the same medication choices you would make? There is a '-1, flamebait'. That crap deserved it.

62 miles above Earth is not exactly space tourism.

[master_p]

It's an insult to those of us that have grown on Science Fiction and on a dream of visiting other star systems.

Really, space is huge. It's so huge, that going 62 miles above the surface is nothing. It's so insignificant, that perhaps we should stop calling related activities space-something.

It can be called space tourism when we can at least visit the Moon.

Re:100k... Cheap enough for porn industry?

[fractoid]

Srs face now: This is something that annoys me no end. Just like you'll never meet someone on the internet who doesn't have at least a 9 inch cock, and still thinks it could be an inch or two bigger, every time people talk about endurance they always say "20 minutes is still too quick, you have to last at least an hour!". That's bullshit. On the first count, anyone over about 6" who's been with more than one or two women will know that sometimes, more than 6 inches just. won't. fit. Anyone who says they're "9 inches and that all the bitches love it" is either 5" or less, or a virgin. On the second count, no matter how much lube you use, you're going to start chafing after about 15-20 minutes unless you're either fully tantric or you're both on IRC at the same time or something, and forget to make with the thrusting.

The only correct answer is "if it's big enough that she couldn't take any more, without being too big and hurting her, and if it lasts long enough for her to get off a couple of times, but not long enough to chafe, then you're doing it right."

Re:62 miles above Earth is not exactly space touri

[khallow]

It's an insult to those of us that have grown on Science Fiction and on a dream of visiting other star systems.

To those of us who have grown up on Science and Engineering, your words are a gross insult. It's too bad that actual space travel isn't sexy enough for the Star Trek crowd (or whatever fantasy you prefer to reality), but we shouldn't diminish genuine accomplishments (well, *cough* when those accomplishments happen).

Re:There's a catch...

[loraksus]

Unless you end up in an uncontrollable spin, pass out and die.

But yeah, that would be fun.