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Space

Tito Good To Go, Rotary Spirals Downward 98

Posted by timothy from the private-passengers-alright! dept.
MousePotato writes: "Space.com is reporting that former NASA scientist turned Wall Street guru Dennis Tito has apparently gotten final approval (paid in full I guess is all you really need) for launch aboard a Soyuz by the end of April. Destination: ISS. Tito was originally slated to be one of the first tourists aboard the rapidly declining MIR space station. No specific figures are available on the site as to how much for the mircograv vacation but the rumor mill is placing the cost of the trip at $20 million USD. This may be just a few dollars more than buying your own rotary rocket company at auction but might just give the space tourism industry the kick it needs..."
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Tito Good To Go, Rotary Spirals Downward More

Tito Good To Go, Rotary Spirals Downward

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  • Just imagine, Hot Rocky Mountain Oysters with Angelina Jolie Excited and Trembling
  • So, for $40 million could he bring a date? I'm sure he'd have his choice of nookie with a ride like that.
  • Personally, I always thought the project was a poorly conceived.

    They planned to make a rocket that could go to GEO that was man controlled. The reliability for that kind of craft is exceeding difficult to create and relatively impossible for low cost. If they had gone unmanned, then maybe...but they also wanted to sell rides.

    For low cost launch vehicles, I thought Universal Space Wares or Kistler would have fielded a good candidate by now.

  • kinda like algore's multi-billion $ bailout of the russian bankers, only problem there was that the russian mafia stole all the money *before* the bankers and crooked business men were able to...

    the us gives the russians about $400 mil each year to help close down old and very dangerous nuke reactors, but they use the money to keep them running for another year because they are so desperate for electricity and no money to build newer and safer nukes...

    there is a good chance of seeing another explosion at a russian nuke site that will make cherynobl seem like an m-80...

  • Is it Honda or Toyota that makes the CRV?

    --

  • ...just build a tunnel to the ISS?

  • Very roughly speaking you may be right.

    However, the point is that to consider space travel "for the masses", you are looking at many, many of these flights. I think this an avenue that we should not go down.

    I find it incredible that on slashdot everyone is so gung-ho about human space travel. Noone really stops to ask why, or consider what are the costs.

    Sure I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, but the cost of putting humans up there is just not worth it.
  • How do you make hydrogen?
    Electrolosys powered by solar arrays.

    If we DON'T venture away from this rock, then I really don't see a future for humanity at all.
    This is like Plato's 'Allagory of the Cave', once one of the men got free and saw what the world was outside of the cave, he realized that he had in fact been a prisioner in the cave.
    We have seen and ventured into a bit of the universe away from Earth, and it's an amazing and hostile place. But to hold ourselves back would be denying one of our most basic instincts of discovery and exploration that has made us what we are today.
    It would be sad to see humanity stuck on Earth, in the same monotony for the rest of it's existance.

    --
  • Q: Is this idiot a troll?
    A: Too right!

    And if you're not, go hug a tree somewhere.

    Fine it's pretty much useless sending up a tourist/ex-scientist into space, but so what? I'm sure he's not going to be the ONLY payload on the trip. Supplies and such will have to be sent as well.

    Hell if I had the cash to burn I'd do it too, it's been my life long dream to travel into space.

    We were further ahead in space exploration in the 60's than we are today, that's just sad and there's no excuse for it.

    Humans are curious for a reason, we need to satisfy that curioustiy, exploration is how we do it. Should we all climb back into caves and live out our lives? Hell no.

    Your argument about the pollution created by the rocket is bunk. As was said in an earlier post the rocket exhaust contains no harmful compounds and actually puts Ozone BACK in the atmosphere. As was also pointed out if it DID pollute it would be the equavelent of a jetliner making a round trip to Tokyo from the US. SO, should we quit flying and go back to a world where every contry is an isolationist?

    And as for your question, do you consider water a fossil fuel?

    If you're being serious consider this, if you're trolling, go link to goatse.cx.
  • National Budget Deficit $5.729 Trillion
    Divide by 20million.
    only 286450 more tickets to sell and our country is outta debt!! Woohoo!
  • Well, can't speak for others around here, but I'm paid pretty modestly to sit on my ass and post here all day long.

    But yes, the fuel for a roundtrip to Japan pretty much is a drop in the bucket. Delta alone flies that route several hundred times a year.

  • Of course, Corporations being the soul-less beasts they are, they won't come down on the side of environment. However, if a viable alternative is found, would you still be against sending people into space?

    I really think that at some point (hopefully not in my lifetime), we'll be forced into space because of the population size. The alternative is the majority of people living in conditions worse than they do now, or some sort of massive dying-off. Given the 3 choices, you can strap me to the front of a rocket, thanks.

  • Ahhh progress and a decent thread.

    We do use robots for exploration, case in point the Mars Lander, exteremely successful we learned a lot. But, it also raised more questions. Now the question would be would it have been more productive to have humans there? Probably, since a robot dosen't have the 'intelligence' of a human. A human could experement further and come up with new ones that could be better suited based on his/her initial findings.

    Robots can only bring us so far, in the end it's up to humans to take the data from the robot and make hypotheses(?) based on that and expirement further or draw conclusions. So, in the case of Mars would it have been more productive to have humans there doing expirements? In my opinion yes, would it be feasable? No, right now it's too expensive and dangerous.

    Putting people in orbit however is much easier and comparitevely cheaper than going to Mars. Furthermore if we are to venture forth into the cosmos we need to know the effects of prolonged exposure to zero g etc on the human body. We can't do that on earth, so put a man in orbit.

    The people doing this are volunteering for it, they know the risks, and accept them. It's the human adventure.
  • Speaking of lighting a fire under the ass of the space industry, I'm writing a novel right now that is based on the single premise:

    "In space, you can grow whatever you want, and deliver it pretty darn easily to anywhere on the planet"

    Heh.
  • Mod that up! I read that a few weeks ago and couldn't remember where. Thanks for posting the link :)

  • Tito has paid the final installment on his purchase, and the Russian Space Agency has supposedly approved, but the ISS isn't all Russia's, and NASA still has some say in whether or not he goes up. Personally, if I were an astronaut with my PhD and five years of training to get into space to work, I'd be ticked off sharing space with a rich tourist.
  • When the Russians wanted to do this on Mir, I was fine with it. Mir is their thing; if they want to let people video tape on Mir, that's fine. But ISS was funded almost entirely by the US, as Russia has been notoriously bad on holding up their end of the bargain, as you undoubtedly know if you've been following this whole charade. I wish that NASA could somehow stop the Russians from doing this. I know that they've got to be extremely angry at the entire situation. There's nothing they can do at this point, of course, but still, it makes me both mad and sad. What a waste of a wonderful research laboratory.

  • Yowwch! (Score:3)

    by perdida ( 251676 ) <thethreatprojectNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Wednesday January 03, 2001 @12:02PM (#533273) Homepage Journal
    The ISS is a dump heap for those members of the studio audience who would have the $$$ and the hubris for such an ostentatious trip.

    The ISS is cramped, already smells like astro-sweat, and has very loud air conditioners (I mean so loud you can barely hear yourself talk)

    If I had 20 million dollars I would invest it in myself so I could get the skills and training needed to go into space and do something USEFUL, like piloting the craft or conducting scientific experiments. I would not sit up there bearing the sneers of the crew who is so top notch they get PAID to be up there (hazard pay).

  • That's what people don't realize when they start attacking obscene amounts of wealth being tossed about by billionaires like so much used tissue. In previous centuries, if you wanted to be an artist then you got yourself a spot in the king's or duke's court. Even today, if you want money for your trade, then you go to the people who have money. It's that simple.

    The government has always been fickle about giving money to space research in the aftermath of the cold war, and despite Clinton's recent calls for increases in funding, the new republican congress will be reluctant to increase and may even decrease Nasa's resources. So whom else can we turn to? You'd be upset if PizzaHut had another logo emblazoned on a rocket, so if you'll not court the corporations then you'll have to court the individuals. And it's not as though the research that goes into learning how to put rich people into orbit will be useless when we eventually get around to putting the rest of us there too.

    Tito gets his thrill and we all benefit. What's the problem?
  • $20 million seemed like a huge amount of money to me until I started thinking about how many people would have to pay $20 million per visit to cover the costs of building the ISS -- at a price tag of $100 billion, FIVE THOUSAND people would have to shell out that kind of cash, and then you'd still have launch and support costs...
  • Well, I dunno. Apparently a Soyuz lifts off with 279.5 tons of fuel [esa.int](we'll ignore the fact that much of that is LOX and pretend that it's all kerosene), and a 747 going NY to Tokyo takes off with about 125 tons [jal-foundation.or.jp], of which all certainly is kerosene. Roughly speaking, then, he's making the NY to Yokyo run and back in an empty jumbo jet -- extravagant, but hardly earth-shaking.
  • > How do you make hydrogen?
    > Electrolosys powered by solar arrays.

    Nice idea but energy is energy.

    I dont know the exact facts but I guess 95% of US energy comes from fossil fuels. What percentage solar arrays??

    With attitudes as entrenched as these, no wonder the US will never sign the Kyoto accord
  • Quoted from article linked above..

    If he could, Stockman said, he'd say so to any small business considering moving to Kern County.

    "It's a community of vultures," Stockman said. "When things start going bad, when we're wounded, people begin picking and chewing at us."

    As somebody that was born and raised in Kern County, I completely agree with this statement. A little explaining might be in order.

    Kern County straddles the southern end of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Bakersfield is on the western half. Mojave and Ridgecrest (home of NAWS China Lake and my hometown) is on the eastern half.

    Bakersfield has resented for years the fact that all the innovative tech happens in the other half of the county. Bakersfield is primarily made up of unused oil fields, farmland and hicks. Mojave Airport has been the base of operations of quite a number of pretty cool things (The non-stop round-the-world plane Voyager, Rotary Rocket, several of the countries only privately owned military jets). Ridgecrest / China Lake is the Navy's primary weapon development base. The Sidewinder, AMRAAM, HARM and HARPOON missles were all designed at this base. Forget Area51 for seeing weird Govt stuff, check out Echo Range.

    My point is, Bakersfield and Kern County regularly bleeds the outlying cities dry in order to support its growing population of LA Gang members, and California rednecks. This whole story about what they are doing to Rotary Rocket doesn't surprise me in the least.

  • While this can be good, in the fact that it makes scientists look for better, cheaper ways to do things, as in the various relatively inexpensive space probes we've been launching

    I don't know that the recent round of inexpensive space probes are anything to be proud of. How do you convert meters to feet again? Oops, splattered another better, faster, cheaper space probe into Mars.

    How's that joke go? "You can have better, faster, or cheaper. Choose two."

  • You dont get it do you??

    The key to space travel is energy.

    If you want human-kind to travel to space, we should be spending our dollars on fusion research. Until that is solved, it is a waste of our limited resources to send people into space on a what amounts to a jolly.
  • I thought this was a story about the Jackson family...

    E.
  • By all accounts, Goldin is doing his level best to discourage this flight. I can't imagine NASA supporting it, even to keep the Russians from pulling off the first commercial space travel.

    And there is no third choice. Not yet.

    Tito wants to dance, so he's paying the only piper who'll take his money.

    ---

  • Re:Dennis Tito is gonna get some press (Score:3)

    by tesserae ( 156984 ) on Wednesday January 03, 2001 @04:00PM (#533283)
    NASA needs to put some beef into man-rating the X-38 derivative CRV and certifying it for launch aboard an ELV (like a Delta) so that we can have a cheap way to put people in orbit.

    Ummmm... the CRV will be man-rated; it has to be, since it will carry crew. Live crew, in fact... ;)

    It's already been noted that the CRV or some derivative thereof would make a fine low-cost mini-shuttle. ESA (the European Space Agency) is has been spending money on that, and are even working on their own version of the landing parafoil (ESA is providing funds and hardware for the X-38 program anyway). The Japanese are also rumored to be interested.

    Matter of fact, I've seen some preliminary design work on the ESA ideas for this, at JSC in Houston (but don't quote me on that...).

    ---

  • While that would be nice, with George Abbey's (present head of JSC) connections to the new administration it's unlikely to be anyone other than him.

    Damn shame, but true. Texas...

    ---

  • I think you have been misinformed: Rotary Rocket was never intended to go to geosynch. It could potentially be used as a platform for another object to boost itself from LEO to GEO (much like the shuttle), but it was never intended to reach GEO on its own -- with or without a pilot.

    The Rotary Rocket was a brilliant design for many reasons, but very few people are willing to make that kind of paradigm shift in their thinking about vehicle design.

    In the end, though, it was really killed by overall industry pressure. Like many inventions, people probably won't appreciate the value of a single stage to orbit reusable vehicle until they have it. And then we won't be able to build enough of them. (And don't let anyone convince you that the shuttle is an SSTO vehicle - as good as it is, it is an embarassment to its original objectives.)

  • I'll agree with that, but take it another step further, without the research being done CURRENTLY we have no hope of solving the fusion problem.

    Most scientists, I think, will agree that Fusion is the key to our next step. But, fusion isn't going to just happen, research is needed, and that means some research outside the confines of earth's gravity.

    I guess you have to look at all this as a necessary small evil.
  • There are those who say that Abbey already is the most powerful man in NASA. If so then why would he want to step into the limelight?

    Check "Dragonfly" by Bryan Burrough for more info on Abbey and other aspects of the Texas mafia...

  • Oops, splattered another better, faster, cheaper space probe into Mars.

    Keep in mind, "cheaper" generally means "a tenth the price of Viking. We can afford the expense of losing a couple. I don't know if NASA can afford the negative PR of it, though.
  • everything has a price.

  • Can you imagine... (Score:4)

    by B00yah ( 213676 ) on Wednesday January 03, 2001 @11:11AM (#533290) Homepage
    the tip you would have to give the pilot? :P Let's see...15% of $20,000,000...
  • remember total recall?
  • I've always believed that private (and corporate for that matter) money would light a fire under the ass of the "Space Industry".

    I hope this causes folks with money to sit up & take notice, and start investing in getting the masses into space.

  • Why would anybody pay to launch dead Yugoslav dictators into space? Oh, wait...
  • I first thought "Oh no! rotary spirals down? I won't be able to use my older telephones anymore!"

    Boy was I relieved...

    "Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
  • if you have the cash..

    At any rate, this is a good thing(tm) I think, more people going up into space can't be bad fore the economy, and it's not like we're paying for it out of our tax dollars or anything. Good for him.
  • space until we have non-governmental access to space through commercial, low cost rockets.

    Oh well, maybe the Chinese will start landing on Mars, just the thing we need to kick America in the pants.
  • I hope he doesn't get gobbled up by Vermicious Knids!
  • Despite the fact that I usually maintain a *very* liberal bent, one of the things I *won't* miss about a democratic presidency/legislative majority is the fact that the dems have very, very rough on publicly funded science and space exploration.

    While this can be good, in the fact that it makes scientists look for better, cheaper ways to do things, as in the various relatively inexpensive space probes we've been launching, it's murder on the sheer amount of real innovation and scientific advance. The only science that has gotten anywhere in the last 10 years has been bio-tech, and this is because profit is close at hand for the corporate world.

    If you don't think this is the case, just ask any of the physicists who used to live in Texas. When Clinton was elected.. *BAMF*... there went the SSC.

    From a purely nerd-boy point of view, It's nice to see big money being spent, even on a personal, wasteful basis, on space, when so little has gone into it over the last few years. Hopefully it will inspire more public and government confidence in space exploration.

    Remember that early exploration of the Americas was costly in terms of money and human life, but without those early pioneers who knew that money was not coming easy or soon, we wouldn't have the industrial powerhouses of the western hemisphere cranking out computer hardware and cheap internet access today.
  • Spend it and what a way to spend it I must say. Hey soon (10 years or so) it might only cost a mere million to reach the stars. WOW i cant wait. Doh on my salary if I am lucky I might just be able to afford a trip to the space center.
  • Once companies see people are actualy willing to pay big bucks for this, NASA will start having compition for pasangers.

  • What a great idea... (Score:5)

    by TopShelf ( 92521 ) on Wednesday January 03, 2001 @11:25AM (#533301) Homepage Journal
    If someone's willing to pay $20 million for the opportunity to visit the Space Station...

    how much would they be willing to pay for the return trip?

  • When I saw "Tito Good To Go", I thought for a second that the article was about Tito Jackson of the Jackson Five fame. He may not have the bucks to go to space, but I'm sure his brother Michael does. Maybe he could check out the anti-aging effects of space! Now if we could only stuff the Elephant Man's bones in his luggage...


    I'd rather be a unix freak than a freaky eunuch
  • ...I'm glad my tax dollars are going to help the Russians run some sort of Dacha in space program. One last revolting, fucked up development brought to you by the Klinton administration, who were the forces behind this whole, oh, let's bring the Russians in on the ISS program. Great job, Bill....
  • 'Rocket fuel' for the Soyuz craft are liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. The main biproduct of combustion is WATER and because of the heat ozone is actually PRODUCED.
    There's no CO2 produced at all from the viechle, but I guess you could say the ground veichles/transportation train produce some pollution.

    Also, humans NEED to have a future in space, and we need experience now. We can't just wait for 'sometime in the future' for spaceflight, because with that attitude it will never happen.

    --
  • Are these supposed to be the new hot grits and Natalie Portman naked and petrified? I'd rather have the classics.
    --
  • Last I heard, Roton had paid Kern County off (see http://www.bakersfield.com/local/Story/264980p-248 599c.html [bakersfield.com]). Then there was a small matter of an additional $775 servicing fee or somesuch, which got tacked on to the bill. As soon as they were told of this, Roton coughed up that too.

    So it looks like it's not going down just yet, but the US government will soon launch phase 2 of the "let's keep space a government place" campaign by going after the 2001 taxes. Pricks.

    The $150M Roton need to continue wouldn't even pay for the shuttle toilets. At this rate, the first private, reusable spacecraft is going to have cyrillic script on the side.

    Vik :v)
  • Hi! I was actually reading an interesting article about this very issue just the other day. Anyhoo, everybody thinks that the big expense with going to space is buying all the fuel - if you sit and watch an awesome space launch, you could be forgiven for thinking so!

    But it turns out that the big problem with going to space is the economy of scale - they only build one rocket that gets used once, and each shuttle only gets used twice a year. This means that it is inordinately expensive. But studies have shown (no links, I'm very sorry;) that if the space industry were scaled up, then fuel would become the main operating cost - as it is for airlines. Just now it cost $3000 per kilogram that we send into space, and only $30 of that is fuel costs. So if we scaled it up a lot, then costs would massively decrease! We would enter a virtuous circle.

    It seems to me that the space revolution won't begin until the big corps get really interested - there is a wealth of resources out there to be harnessed, after all.

    I'm glad that this small step to commercialism has been taken, because it helps to legitemise the space industry on Wall Street, which can only be good for the future. Do you agree?

  • If the $20 mil covers his transportation, what about his room rent on the ISS? I wonder if they offer a Triple A discount.

  • aww geeeze (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here we go again with the damn liberal commie tree hugging shit.

    Lissen up raindrop, there's a high end and a low end to that fsck'n bell curve. Just because you chose to live in a mud hut and eat grubs doesn't mean that everybody has to. Oh. Wait a second, your type usually starts turning up around the middle, where people have enough food in their bellies and free time enough to start feeling guilty.

    We all know where the bottom rung of the ladder is. And I for one don't particularly want to stay there. The one thing we can work on is pushing the middle (and the great mass of humanity) higher. Unfortunately for bleeding hearts like you, that means people like that guy get even richer. And get rocket rides.

    Now, granted, I'm making the assumption that our inteligence makes this a non-zero sum game, otherwise ol' Doc Malthus will catch up with us no matter what we do. My view is "I don't want a bigger slice of the pie... I want another pie". And as I see it, there's more where that came from. And for that to work, someone needs to get real usage of space going.

    So this guy squanders a few tons of fuel derived from fossil fuels. Big deal. The day's coming when we're gonna use 'em all up driving our SUVs to WalMart -- is that a better use for it? We'll just have to find something else once those are gone. (And yes, that probably will make it harder to generate electricty).

    So feel free to freeze in your damn cave, just don't expect me to stay there with you.

  • The one point I do not understand is, does Tito need government approval (either US or Russian) to even board the space station? It is hard to imagine that the ISS is like, say, the local playground, where any joe can walk right in without the government giving its approval.

    Though it was paid with american tax dollars, so how, at least in theory, could the government deny him access?

    Paul_D

  • Hey, you were bitching about using non-renewable energy to power it and I offered a solution that doesn't use non-renenewable sources: light and water, which we seem to have a lot of.

    You seem to be quite the extremist, even when offered solutions that you complained didn't exist.

    --
  • I'll agree with you too.

    But do most scientists agree that the correct next step is to send humans into space?? (let alone this nobody)
    No way. Like I said all along - robots.
    Fast, cheap and out-of-control.

  • Over at NASA Watch [nasawatch.com], Dennis Tito is among the unofficial 'nominees' [nasawatch.com] to replace Dan Goldin as NASA Administrator.

    I say, let Tito run NASA from space, and send Goldin to swab space fungus from the walls of Mir in preparation for deboost.

  • Rotary's as good as out (Score:3)

    by roystgnr ( 4015 ) <royNO@SPAMstogners.org> on Wednesday January 03, 2001 @09:07PM (#533316) Homepage
    They aren't going to see any serious revenue until their launch vehicle reachs orbit, and even by their optimistic development cost estimates, that's going to take more than the 5 figure sum they owe in taxes, it's going to take another 8 figures of capital. Granted, there's always the chance that some wacky billionaire will cut a check (and Mr. Gates, if you're reading this: here is how to get geeks to forgive you for Windows) but I wouldn't bet on it.

    In other words, if Rotary has paid their taxes, it doesn't mean anything besides a few more months of their aero test unit sitting in mothballs and their remaining staff (Gary Hudson, the man behind the whole thing, has left, and I don't know how many people survived their layoffs) praying for new investors.

    Damn shame, too. Even Beal's out of the running now. I don't know how Kistler is doing now, but if they don't make orbit we can pretty much kiss serious space development goodbye for another couple decades.
  • I am not against space exploration.

    Pardon me for not following slashdot-consensus, but I just think they should be smarter about the way they do it. There is absolutely no need to put humans in space. They have to have a whole life support system that costs more than the people do. It may make for better TV, but robots are a far better idea.

  • "In space, you can grow whatever you want, and deliver it pretty darn easily to anywhere on the planet"
    It occurs to me that: a) it's pretty damn easy to track where that payload lands and either wait for the intended recipients of "confiscate" it for wink wink nudge nudge "evidence", and b) this could lenda whole new twist to the use of ABMs.

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

  • I totally agree that robots are the way to go in space exploration. However, I don't give a damn about the environment (except for those stupid six-pack holders).
  • My dad used to be in the Rotary [rotary.org], but he got sick of it, both because of their beliefs and their substance. I sat in for a few meetings -- all they ever did was eat crappy lunches in hotel ballrooms, listened to crappy speakers, then introduced themselves if they were from a different charter and took the crappy banner that they get for being from somewhere else.

    I was even born in Evanston and thought about going to Northwestern, but I just can't go back there knowing how many Rotarians I'll find.

  • ...one of the things I *won't* miss about a democratic presidency/legislative majority is the fact that the dems have very, very rough on publicly funded science and space exploration.

    Reference, please? I know that Maryland's Democratic congresscritters are reasonably good on space and science (for the usual pork barrel reasons, not any high principle - we have Goddard, NIH, NIST, APL, and the Space Telescope Science Institute).

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

  • You don't know. I know a little because I have been working on a couple of projects in the Former Soviet Union.

    The economy has some problems and the mafia are not nearly as bif a problem as you think. Personal taxation is now done to 13% of annual income so many more persons are being encouraged to enter the system.

    Why shouldn't the Russians accept commercial money to help their space program? If they want to be the first to offer the possibility of tourism then what is the problem?

    In the US, this would be significantly more difficult because you would have to sign a boat-load of disclaimers before you crossed the starting line. One endemic disease in the US is the lawyer who effectively prevents many forms of high-risk activity being offered on a commercial basis. For example, you can't even commercially white-wate raft above a level 3 rapid in the US because of legal difficulties (5 is permissable elsewhere), so just think what would happen if you said to your legal dept that you want to offer space-tourism.

  • Yes its funny but why notcarry advertising?

    If it makes the taxpayers money go further then carry advertising would be a good thing.

    The problem is that maybe a rival to an advertiser who is a taxpayer may object. This is one reason why full commercialism offers the best flexibility.

  • Where do you think that 20 million dollars goes? Besides the fact that the ISS is being paid for as it's being assembled. That 100 billion dollars is spread out over several years and comes out of NASA's allowance they get from you paying taxes to the federal government all year. NASA is not a private organization, they are a branch of the government and appropriated funds generated from the taxation of citizens. What part don't you understand about this concept? It costs ~2 million dollars to lift a human into space abaord the space shuttle, if you add in operational costs and whatnot you start to figure out where that 20 million is going. No one is going to pay for people to get a free ride anywhere, especially an anywhere thats worth 100 billion dollars and millions of man-hours. There might be a small profit left over from that 20E6 that NASA gets to pocket until POLICY CHANGES (hint) the federal government keeps that profit and redistributes it throughout the entire body of government (as opposed to NASA getting to add it to their operational funding).
  • Boo for Rotary. Every time I have seen anything involving those guys the founder has come off as a complete jackass. Now they are blaming their failure on "fundamental flaws in the industry" which is some jackass not wanting to take responsibility for having a shitty business plan. The Roton at best is a luke warm idea, orbital vehicles have enough complexities in more traditional configurations without rotors; why would you want to add more complexity (read: things to go horribly fucking wrong and turn you into a short bright flare)? They attempted to design and build a prototype for their contraption (an prohibitively expensive proposition) with a very limited cash flow. Had they hired a smart CEO with business savvy they might have merely kept themselves are a research and development firm for their space vehicle and sold their idea to anyone interested in shouldering the cost of prototyping and deployment. Shooting evolved monkeys into space will be profitable in a few years when a market opens for such a business. First build a market and then capitalize on it; don't be a jackass and try to capitalize on a market that isn't even around.
  • Well when I talked to one of the people from Rotary trying to sell the concept, that is what they stated. Maybe they didn't know themselves?
  • I agree that the science done in space with humans is negligible. All good space science is done with robots.

    What is done in space with humans is entirely different. We prove the technology necessay to support humans in space. This is very important in the evolution of the human race. We have to diversify ourselves from just one planet. The whole planet could get wiped at any moment. The goal of the human race is to explore and learn more about the world we live in. This includes earth and the universe.

    Many in the scientific community think ISS is a waste of money. I disagree. ISS advances the technology for humans leaving earth.

    bob

  • Earth's First Self-Financed Astronaut (Score:4)

    by MarsOrBust ( 236830 ) on Wednesday January 03, 2001 @11:27AM (#533328)
    Tito recently provided SpaceRef with an in-depth interview [spaceref.com] which makes for good reading.
  • Of course this is all being paid for out ot Tito's pocket and has nothing at all to do with you. Grow up and stuff.
  • I think it would make me very nervous to invest a lot of money in Russia right now. Between the governmental problems (they can't even afford to pay their military) and the mafia who control EVERYTHING... I think someone with 20 mil could find a better place to put it.
  • and then they'd need to add an infrastructure, and then more people would be living in space, and in a few decades, a space colony might be self sufficient.

    And then we're out of the crib.

  • These things should have their price (Score:3)

    by levik ( 52444 ) on Wednesday January 03, 2001 @11:33AM (#533332) Homepage
    I think it's great that a person can buy their way into space. This is what will lead to competition among non-government space developers, and ultimately result in innovative technologies for getting to and utilizing space.

    One would think slashdotters more than anyone would see the advantages of breaking the monopoly of a single agency over something with as much potential as space.

  • For $20 million, I'd be taking at least one member of the opposite sex with me. Schwing.

    "I got naked in Mir and all I got was this lousy T shirt."

  • From what I saw of the Roton project, it always looked like a winner: low cost, reusable, and based on a simple (if not conventional) principle. I'm not saying that it's the BEST solution, and I'm sure plenty of right-wing "the invisible hand of the free market is never wrong" crew will tell me different, but I'd like to see more diversity of vision in this field.

    I mean, using rotating wings to maneuver in the atmosphere is hardly revolutionary, it just hasn't been applied to (sub)orbital craft. And $150 for the whole project? That's not exactly a lot of money. I guess the investment climate is pretty chilly, or maybe the execs didn't market effectively, but there should be SOMEONE in this world with the vision and cash to back this thing. I mean, Gates could stand to gamble a quarter Bil on extending his monopoly into orbit (oh, right, he already has).

    Of course, I always preferred the idea to use a mountain near the equator to launch vehicles in an evacuated magnetic catapult, but with more variety in engineering solutions the more lessons we'll learn.

    Cheaper, lighter, simpler. Even if it does flop, it still beats the hell out of the Shuttle.

  • Here is an article [fourmilab.ch] that may interest readers of the above post.

    If you have an interest in space, please read it.

  • How can you say that? Last I checked not only is the US paying for the majority of the Space Station, we are also paying the Russians for modules that they deliver years late and hundereds of millions of dollars over budget.
  • For 20 mil I'd let him sit in my closet with a bunch of blinking lights and play 2001 music all day long while occasionally flashing pictures of the solar system through the crack in the door.
  • As in Mir-co-grav?

    Suddenly, I feel light-headed...

    -- This .sig for rent
  • Thanks, thats very interesting. Just the sort of thing I should have linked to in my post, for proof.
  • For $20 million, them peanuts better be damn good.

    For that matter, what about free drinks. I wonder if he could smuggle some tequilla up and limes up.

    The first tequilla hangover in space. That would have to be a record somewhere.

  • Q. How do you make the hydrogen???
    A. From fossil fuels.

    Human's don't *have* to make it into space.
    You play to much Alpha Centauri.
  • of course, with inflation and such, orange juice will cost about $1,000 too...
    -----
  • Hey, what do we place his odds of survival at?
  • Point made! I admit I'm no international policy expert, so I'm a slave to what our media tells me. I really want Russia to get it's sh*t together, because it makes the world a safer place. If this guy's 20 Mil will help that, all the better. Now, if we could lose about 85% of the lawyers in this country, we could actually live... companies could put out products... teachers could teach... etc. etc. etc...
  • This brings up a good point: Who's paying fFor this bus?

    Okay, Mr. Tito is paying his own way. Let's make sure it stays that way. Anyone know what a fFlight to space costs? i mean, the total costs of ground crew, rocket fFuel, training camp, gallons of coffee all around ... does $20 million cover it all? i dunno. but if it doesnt, guess who covers the charges.

    not that I'm against such expeditions; on the contrary, i'm a fFervent supporter. People are often asking "why do we spend money on a space program, today?" This is why. Not necesarilly fFor another 50 years of oddball experiments (all perfectly valid, i'm sure) but ultimately, those experiments must have terminus, and fFruition. Specifically, We must start putting people into space on a more casual basis, whether nasa officials [space.com] agree with me or not.

    This however comes at a cost. which is my concern. Using a presnt day model, 20 people hop on a bus and pay 50 cents to go across twon. be assured, the bus costs more than $10 to staff, license, gas, maintain, and drive. but it works because lots of people do this, and the collective money goes into an account which covers costs. And as long as people use it, and the account continues to see gain, the system will continue to work. My concern then, is that we put ourselves in a position to where this program can accept some fFinancial losses, without tax payers catching a lot of the slack. (This goes ever-more-so fFor the fFinancially strapped Russian space agency!)

  • It's not that easy to track if it's going really, really, really fast ... and approximates the same flight characteristics as, say, your average meteorite. And since literally hundreds of those land on the planet every day ...

    And yeah, ABM's come into play in the story. But so does the judicious use of meteorites. The space treaties only deal with *manufactured* weapons, not sticks and stones.

    j.
  • W.H.Smith (a newsagents/bookstore chain) in the UK at least, is selling adventure holiday packages (you know the type, rally car driving, paragliding, helicopter flights type stuff), and at the expensive end of the range is a package promising a trip on a commercial passenger spaceflight at the earliest opportunity. The asking price is either £10,000 or £100,000 (There wasn't a price easily on display in the shops, but my brother works for them and couldn't remember the number of zeros). They reckon you should collect on your purchase sometime in 2003 (by which time your £100,000 should have grown somewhat as well), and give you various things to help prepare you for your trip.

  • Rotary down but not out (Score:3)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Wednesday January 03, 2001 @11:38AM (#533348) Homepage
    Something that article doesn't mention is that Rotary Rocket claims to have wired the money this week to cover the back taxes. Kern County officials say that they'll hold the auction unless they can verify funds being in receipt. So the auction might be cancelled, it's hard to tell. If it isn't I'm gonna be there.

    This is so sad, Rotary Rocket has such a cool cool concept for a re-usable manned SSTO that could have serviced the International Space Station. Iridium's failure is to blame for Rotary's problems. If Iridium hadn't failed, the launcher market wouldn't have dropped out from under companies like Rotary, Kistler and Beal.
  • What you are not thinking about is the absolutely incredible amount of resources that are totally wasted on this trip. Enormous amounts of wasted fossil fuels, and increase in both atmospheric CO2 and ozone eating rocket fuels.

    This guy just doesn't give a shit about the global environment.

    My feeling is that there is absolutely no scientific or economic justification for sending human scientists into space - let alone tourists.

    Leave it to the robots.
  • There is other stuff out there besides Rotan that hasn't gotten anywhere near the hype.

    The _real_ shame here IMHO is that the overall level of private space investment has been so low-in part because there are real issues competing with a government subsidized entity. This could be corrected quite rapidly(say through Jim Bowery's proposal to offer bounty's for the mapping of mars similar to what was done to aerially map the the the American west last century).

    RJB

  • That's all overhead. That has to be paid for whether Tito goes up or not. The costs for Tito's flight and his stay will be completely covered by (you guessed it) Tito.

  • Dennis Tito is gonna get some press (Score:3)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Wednesday January 03, 2001 @11:44AM (#533352) Homepage
    When Tito goes up this year, there is going to be a lot of attention unless MirCorp screws it up. NASA is very pissed off about him going to the ISS because they're worried that people will start realizing that "hey, normal people can survive a trip into space and why the HELL haven't you boys at NASA made space flight anywhere near as safe and cheap as the Russians yet?"

    A space shuttle launch costs $500 million or so, $1 billion if you amortize the whole development into the cost. A Soyuz launch (most reliable manned spacecraft in the world) costs as low as $10 million and possibly as high as $50 million, depending on who you talk to. NASA needs to put some beef into man-rating the X-38 derivative CRV and certifying it for launch aboard an ELV (like a Delta) so that we can have a cheap way to put people in orbit.

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