John Carmack To Cut Space Tourism Prices 50% 185
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."
100k... Cheap enough for porn industry? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmm. 5 minutes up in the space and 100k. Make it just a tad longer and a wee bit cheaper and I guarantee you that it won't take long for us to see the first porn clip to have been filmed in space.
Anyways, 100k is obviously still too expensive for us regular folk but I wonder what is the price tag at which we'll consider it affordable. 50k is unlikely. 20k? still probably not... 10k? I don't know. For that amount, I might want to visit the space before I die. (Hopefully, not *just* before I die, though)
Let me get this straight (Score:1, Interesting)
The ones that haven't done it yet are undercutting the price of the guys that have done it before by 50%? Gee do we get a refund if it crashes? I think you get what you pay for is appropriate here. Maybe they can pull it off but would you want to be on the first ship?
Re:Half of 200k is still 100k (Score:3, Interesting)
The cost of the fuel for a flight like this is about $2000.
and they still make a big markup/ profit (Score:2, Interesting)
it makes you wonder about nasa prices for each missions... and also wonder why this has not happened before
Re:and they still make a big markup/ profit (Score:4, Interesting)
NASA isn't doing "tourism", it's doing science. A big part of what it does is continuous improvement and modification of the mission capabilities of their systems. These guys won't be able to afford that. They'll have to do one or two rounds of refinement then lock it in place for several dozen "missions" in order to break even, because if they don't break even, they go bankrupt and stop flying. NASA breaks even by getting the science done, wowing the taxpayers, and getting approved for another year of funding.
BTW, NASA invented almost all of the stuff that these guys are now using, but these guys don't have to pay NASA a nickel in royalties. If they did, these tourist flights would be an order of magnitude costlier. NASA's successes paid for Carmack's profit projections.
Choice: paying double for Scaled Composites, or... (Score:2, Interesting)
paying half-rate for a no-track-record was-video-game-developer who is excited to be using much more explosive to get me there...
I would pay double for the Virgin Galactic vehicle. Rutan's Scaled Composites have made a few vehicles for a few customers, and have a long record of high-quality vehicles. With SpaceShip One, they actually flew into some definition of "space" on three occasions. So the Virgin Galactic vehicle program has a few successful flights to its record.
I am not sure, but I don't think Armadillo Aerospace has actually launched any manned or unmanned vehicles anywhere near the altitude that SpaceShip One attained. Armadillo has flown a few VTOL/hover flights near the surface. I don't think they've flown vehicles above Mach 1, but I would be glad to see a correction.
In short, the Armadillo program seems a little over-hyped.
The worse consequence of all the private space program over-hyping of late is that President Obama has decided to rely on these private space companies for human space flight, starting "ASAP." We're going to lose some astronauts to hype, I fear. And we will definitely give up our "lead" in space flight.
I am in favor of private space exploration companies, but I am against over-hyping their capabilities. We are presently making a blunder by retiring the Space Shuttle while we hope that these private suppliers get somewhere quickly.
Re:Half of 200k is still 100k (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:and they still make a big markup/ profit (Score:2, Interesting)
M ... It's the other way around buddy. Carmack both personally and through his companies has been paying for NASA's research for a long long time.
If you are paying for it with your taxes, you have (or at least you should have) the right to do whatever you want with anything your employees at NASA discover with your money without paying any royalties.
Re:Choice: paying double for Scaled Composites, or (Score:3, Interesting)
The FY2011 budget doesn't intend for Armadillo or Virgin or any suborbital company to take the lead in HSF development. For the most part that money is going to be going to the same people it was before: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, Orbital Sciences and all of their various subcontractors. The big difference is in that NASA will be moving towards a system where they pay a fixed price for a service rather than using nebulous cost-plus contracts with variable accountability to build them to ever-changing requirements.
Also, Carmack knows what he's talking about when it comes to these machines -- he's hands on in the design and can spout of critical parameters like Q-star like nobodies business. While they may not be visibly as far as Virgin in manned flights, that doesn't mean they don't have a decent chance to catch up. Suborbital is "easier," so the various players can be a lot more nimble and turn-around can go a lot quicker.
Finally, over-hyping the shuttle is as big a blunder as over-hyping anything else. I can't help but feel that if we keep flying it, we'll be killing another 7 astronauts before too long. The shuttle was set to be retired 5 years ago -- unfortunately Griffin pushed for a retro-style Apollo clone that was too expensive for the budget thats politically sustainable for NASA, and thats why we're in this mess. Moving to a system that removes some of the inherent instability of politics seems like a good bet to me.
Re:There's a catch... (Score:1, Interesting)
Um, Ya. can I get that as an alternative to a regular cremation?
Just shove my empty shell out the ship into a decaying orbit, hopefully wrapped in foil so my loved ones can plot my re-entry as a memorial.
I am not kidding.
Re:100k... Cheap enough for porn industry? (Score:3, Interesting)
2suit [wikipedia.org]