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Space Science

Space Tourism is Off and Running 494

Posted by michael from the seven-up-up-and-away dept.
ackthpt writes "The ink wasn't even dry on the Ansari X Prize check, after Brian Binnie piloted SpaceShipOne into space, when deals were already being made. Announced last week, Richard Branson of Virgin Group would be licensing the technology, and according to p2pnet is already embarking on plans to build a fleet of 5 passenger carrying craft. Space tourism? Preposterous! It'll take years, decades. Isn't that the consensus? According to The Australian Cadbury/Schweppes may be giving away a the prize of a space flight under the cap of your next bottle of 7 Up: 'Within hours, one of SpaceShipOne's sponsors and the "official beverage" of the AnsariX Prize, the soft drink 7Up, announced it would be offering the first free ticket into space.' Further, 'another company, Space Adventures, has already collected $US10,000 deposits from about 100 customers for its planned flights, which will cost less than $US100,000.' Last one into space is a rotten egg!"
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Space Tourism is Off and Running More

Space Tourism is Off and Running

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  • My Penny Jar... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kid Zero ( 4866 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:43PM (#10441858) Homepage Journal
    Is off and running. Perhaps in a few years.

    My wife even said I could. :D

    • Re:My Penny Jar... (Score:5, Funny)

      by savagedome ( 742194 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:49PM (#10441949)
      You have a penny jar, 4 digit id and a wife?

      I don't what to make of this.

    • Re:My Penny Jar... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Eccles ( 932 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:59PM (#10442113) Journal
      My wife even said I could.

      So did mine, until she realized I would be coming back.

    • Are you sure? (Score:5, Funny)

      by sczimme ( 603413 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:08PM (#10442255)

      maybe she said should.
      :-)

    • Re:My Penny Jar... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jandrese ( 485 ) *
      This got me wondering, how much would 10,000,000 pennies weigh on Earth? Assuming you are in a area with 1.0g gravity and you collect nothing but post 1982 pennies, your jar is going to weigh in at 25,000 kg before you hand it off to Virgin in exhange for a ticket.

      For those of you not well versed in the Metric system, this is about 27.6 tons (not counting the weight of the jar). You will probably also have a significant fraction (perhaps greater than 100%) of all pennies ever produced.

      • Re:My Penny Jar... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by spooky_nerd ( 646914 )
        The number of US pennies minted in 2004 was 4,952,000,000. So the number of pennies needed for the trip is only about 0.2% of the number of pennies minted in the last year.

  • So now.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by bl1st3r ( 464353 )
    Not only can you go into space, your teeth can rot pleasantly in the process.

    I hate giveaways. I never win.

    -E

  • Time to cut out that second cup of coffee. (Score:5, Funny)

    by scooby111 ( 714417 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:43PM (#10441864)
    I figure I can save up $100,000 by only eating out once a week or so..... for the next 400 years.

    It sounds neat and all, but I think I'll wait until it costs around $10,000 total. Hopefully I won't be too old by then.
    • actually, it will never drop to $10000 thanks to inflation, you'll actually be waiting till $100000 is minimun wage for a year of simple labor. We'll also have to build about 100 space elevators before the cost drops to a level that the top 5% of the global population can afford (ie, the united states public). Wooo, boy i wish i had a billion laying around.
    • You know what really sucks, mainly older folks will be able to go up (as mainly older folks have that kind of cash to burn) and the time to enjoy something like space is at young ripe age...how many 80 year olds can survive the take off. It's a health hazard to say the least.
      Well I better find me a rich wife.
      The price is 100 grand now, it will come down - first the insane rich will buy it, then the ultra rich, then the corporations for their big clients, then the rich, and eventually we will..I would wage

  • Damn... (Score:5, Funny)

    by lucabrasi999 ( 585141 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:44PM (#10441870) Journal

    Now there won't be any place where I can go to avoid the tourists.

  • What Kind of Trip? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:44PM (#10441872) Homepage Journal

    We're not talking extended orbital flight, are we? Just a quick peek above the atmosphere, then straight back down, right?

    While that might be fun, I don't consider it especially compelling -- certainly not to the tune of $100K.

    Schwab

    • Re:What Kind of Trip? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by eln ( 21727 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:49PM (#10441946)
      Maybe not for you, but if you were a multi-millionaire, $100K may seem a pretty small price tag for the opportunity to do something truly unique like this. This is not targetting the average man on the street, it's an exotic vacation for the very rich.

      This was pretty much the aim of SpaceShip One from the beginning. The X-Prize just helped to give it that extra edge of excitement and competition that makes the media drool and gets you lots of free press. Winning it is a springboard to the tourism industry, but it wasn't the primary goal. This thing would have been eventually used for space tourism whether it won the X-Prize or not.
      • This is not targetting the average man on the street, it's an exotic vacation for the very rich.

        Oh, but according to Paul Allen, it's his dream to make journeying to space affordable for the average person. Are you calling him out of touch with reality? (note the dripping saracasm here ;) )

        • Re:What Kind of Trip? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by LetterJ ( 3524 ) <j@wynia.org> on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:14PM (#10442353) Homepage
          Please note that most real leaps in technology are only available to the fabulously wealthy at first.

          Just look at airplanes. The first commercial flights were really expensive and only an exotic diversion for the rich. Now, I can fly across this country and back again for a couple of hundred bucks.

          Cars were quite expensive until the Model T revolutionized the manufacture and made them cheap enough for everyone.

          Entry level computers were multi-thousand dollar machines as recent as 5-10 years ago and now you can have a new machine every year for under $1 a day.

          The only way that "affordable for the average person" arrives is to go through a phase of "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" first.

      • Travel (Score:3, Insightful)

        by TiggertheMad ( 556308 )
        This might have a really interesting application for fast travel in a few years. New York to Japan in under an hour anyone?

        Do something like that, and CEOs will be lining up to give you money.
    • While that might be fun, I don't consider it especially compelling -- certainly not to the tune of $100K.

      So don't go; that'll leave more room for the rest of us.

      We might live to see a hotel on the moon (or, nanites permitting, Mars), but this is as close as any of us is likely to get. To see the Earth as a globe rather than a flat piece of land, to be the first generation to experience microgravity, to say 'I can see my country from here'... these are powerful reasons, and ones that'll most likely cost
    • I'm perfectly willing to pay US$50K for a trip with at least three orbits with less than a 1% chance of harm. Can anyone give me a lift?

      • Re:What Kind of Trip? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @04:22PM (#10444700) Homepage
        Hmm... three orbits is a lot more reasonable. Let me pull up my calculator.

        Using my last drag coefficients and mass as default, if the rocket is up at 100km altitude, and gets an "orbital" starting velocity, reentry will occur some time around 1000 seconds later. So, that would be less than 1/5th of an orbit. Neat for a transatlantic trip, but not good enough for your req's.

        120 km makes it for about 3/4 of an orbit.
        130 km makes it for about 1 1/2 orbits.
        140 km makes it for about 3 1/2 orbits.

        So, 140 km should be plenty - and at 5 1/4 hours in length, it'd be a reasonable-length ride. For comparison, ISS orbits at ~400km.

        If I had to postulate a raw guess (I could always take the time to simulate it :P ), I'd imagine that, thanks to the low ISP and high tank mass, SpaceShipOne and WhiteKnight would both need to be somewhere between 5 and 10 times bigger to carry the same amount of payload to this altitude and this speed. That's also probably long enough in space that they'll want to put heaters/temperature sensors/etc on all of their hydraulics, although they probably don't need to go as complex as a fully orbital system. Life support would definitely need improvement. And, of course, they need TPS. All of these things, plus the raw tank, oxidizer, and fuel mass, will really add up. We're looking at, minimum, 100 mil$ development cost (probably significantly more), and a far higher per-flight cost due to all of the extra components needed and extra wear on them.

        As an aside... I've been considering a different kind of TPS that I haven't read about before. Sort of a liquid/gasseous ablative. You design the skin of the spacecraft to be two layers, held together by a porous honeycomb. You pump in chilled, pressurized liquid, which leaves through vents in the rear of the craft's skin as a superheated gas - and thus, you bleed off your heat in the gas, instead of in an ablative coating. The big cost in normal ablatives is like the cost in shuttle tiles: inspection and reapplication. It takes a long time, and the coatings/tiles can be damaged easily.

        Does this sound like a reasonable alternative to anyone else? I assume that it's been considered before and rejected, since I doubt I'm the first to come up with it, so I'd like to hear what people think could be wrong with it.
    • While that might be fun, I don't consider it especially compelling -- certainly not to the tune of $100K.

      Unless you are spending some time up there and actually doing some activity I don't see ANY point to paying that sort of money for the trip. Zero gravity would be exciting for about 24 hours until you got bored with floating around. The view of the Earth, while certainly amazing, isn't going to be all that great after that same 24 hours.

      So what are you going to do for the rest of your time up there?
    • $100K to see what very few other mortals have in the course of history is exactly what the new rich would give, that and more I am sure.

      When it is common for people to sink well over that into an entertainment room that they use occasionaly or only to brag to the neighbors I am sure that there will be a long line. There are an increasing number of people in the world that have $100K in pocket change. I am sure that there are lots of people who would pay much more than that jut to first.

      Now if that line b
    • You're exactly right. Sorry, but THIS IS NOT SPACE TRAVEL. Yes, yes, I know that some arbitrary NASA paper pusher defined space as "this high".

      Space travel is controlled space travel, not shoot a box as high as you can go.

      Wake me when we have orbital insertions (a MUCH more difficult problem), and then we'll talk about space tourism.

  • Spaced Out Tourists (Score:5, Funny)

    by mfh ( 56 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:44PM (#10441876) Homepage Journal
    Last one into space is a rotten egg!

    No thanks. I think I'll wait until there is an actual destination before going into space. Let me know when you find the dimensional rift that leads to Utopia and I'll sign up then. I would love to see Utopia! Oh my. I bet it's got lots of systems in it that can play Doom 3 in Ultra mode. :-)

    I'm now positive that Lance Bass [google.ca] is finally going to go to space. Mentally the guy is already there! He was going to pay $20mil to go to space, and now all the dregs of society can do it for merely $100k. Oh poor Lance! Well at least he can go now.

  • Show us your can? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nuclear Elephant ( 700938 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:44PM (#10441878) Homepage
    the "official beverage" of the AnsariX Prize, the soft drink 7Up

    Kind of gives new meaning to the 7up slogan, "Show us your can"
  • It time to start saving my pennies so I can buy a trip to space. The big question to ask....

    What are you willing to give up in order to save the money for a flight to space?

    For me, I'm considering moving into a shittier apartment. Oh, and I plan to start drinking more 7-Up.

  • i can see it now..... (Score:5, Funny)

    by to_kallon ( 778547 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:45PM (#10441889)
    congratulations, dave, you won a trip into space. but i have been hacked by pepsi and you must now die. i'm sorry dave.

  • My prediction... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JoeLinux ( 20366 ) <joelinux@ g m a i l . c om> on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:46PM (#10441906)
    This will be the "look at me" popular thing for awhile, like ballooning was.

    Something will replace rocket-powered flight, and that will lead the way into space flight.

    16-year olds are going to get a "spacing permit", along with Dad's old clunker, only capable of going to the moon and back.

    Hey...just a thought.

  • Making money? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Cranx ( 456394 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:46PM (#10441909)
    Making money? I hate it already!

  • Only costs US$100k? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JUSTONEMORELATTE ( 584508 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:46PM (#10441910) Homepage
    Oh, in that case nevermind what I said before [slashdot.org]


    --
    Free gmail invites [slashdot.org]

  • Make Seven Up Yours (Score:5, Funny)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:47PM (#10441919) Homepage Journal
    ...waaayyyyyyyyy up.

  • Anoying (Score:2, Interesting)

    by hey ( 83763 )
    Doesn't SpaceShipOne burn rubber and nitrous oxide?
    What are the environmental side-effect of that!
    Just so some rich guys can have a thrill.
    At the very least there should be an enivronental surtax on it (say one million bucks). Or how about
    force all frivilous astro-tourists to clean up some toxic waste on Earth.
    • At the very least there should be an enivronental surtax on it.
      Ok.... as long as the taxes are actually used towards cleaning up the environment or research into clean technologies, instead of being poured into the black hole of the common treasury as usual.

      And no, donations to Greenpeace or funding a governmental agency for clean technology (with people who produce nothing but useless paperwork) do not count as 'cleaning up the environment'

  • My Prediction: (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The excitement will last right up until one of these flights explodes, killing everyone aboard. After the lawsuits clear up, methinks you'll see the market for "space tourism" dry up for a while.

  • Woo; an X Prize (Score:2, Informative)

    by rde ( 17364 ) *
    Now, the X Prize will evolve into a regular competition called the X Prize Cup, says the Associated Press, going on:

    "In May, organizers selected New Mexico to permanently host the X Prize Cup."
    Cool. A Blue Riband for space. Based on distance rather than speed, I suppose. Someone should offer a prize for whomever gets close enough to the moon to photograph the Sea of Tranquility, and shut our conspiracy-laden chums up once and for all.

    So does the p2p in p2pnet now stand for planet to planet, then?
  • Space Tourism still needs a space hotel, though, to be worthwhile.

  • In Related News... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tibor the Hun ( 143056 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:50PM (#10441956)
    Mello Yellow will be offering a school bus ride across the US as its prize.

  • I say we all take up a collection to buy ol' Darl McBride a one-way ticket! Who's with me?

  • childhood dreams (Score:5, Insightful)

    by t1nman33 ( 248342 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:51PM (#10441967) Homepage
    I always wanted to get the chance to go into space. But after the Challenger disaster and the ensuing slowdown in spaceflight and exploration--to say nothing of the strict requirements for NASA astronauts even before that--I figured I wouldn't likely get the chance. Space seemed the domain only of scientists and researchers with government contracts.

    But I never really considered commercial spaceflight as being something viable, something that could grow and prosper even without the imprimatur of a major government. Not until now.

    I wonder how many other young astronaut dreamers might now get their chance...if only for just one flight?

  • Space Junk... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by softspokenrevolution ( 644206 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:53PM (#10442000) Journal
    I guess that it's a nice idea, but aside from novelty flights is there any practical application to all of this in the next ten years?

    Also given all the junk that government sponsored space flight puts off, how are we to regulate these novelty flights in regards to jettisoning various bits of detrius? Or am I just being paranoid?
  • Give me a call when the price of a ticket into space is about the same as a trip across the ocean in the Concorde. By then your average 'rich guy' and even some of the people who really really want to go could actually save enough money to go once in their lifetime.

  • This is a good thing. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:55PM (#10442038)
    For those of you rolling your eyes at the $100,000 cost, the thing is about technology is that it is a rolling snowball; the effect gets bigger and bigger.

    Just last week, spaceflight was only for NASA, Russian Astronauts, and Dennis Tito. Today, it is for rich multimillionaires with $100,000 to blow. A few years from now, it will be for rich millionaires with $10,000 to blow. Soon enough, we might have the 'M' prize for first privately owned craft to go to the moon. And this will probably be way after the Space Shuttle program got replaced by Southwest Spacelines.

    Sound familiar? Samething happened with computers. First, the CEO of IBM said that only about eight would be necessary for all of humanity. Then came the mainframes, then came the minicomputers, and then came the personal computers. Now my PDA has more processing power than my computer had only eight years ago.

    Its an inevitable process, and I look forward to observing it.
    • Your points are right, but the picture is bigger than this. This is something that will show how innovation, when left in the hands of private enterprises, thrives at a much higher level.

      The markets will take this where it needs to go. Having a group of government-paid people choose what should happen in space doesn't put things within the best interest of everyone else. Soon there will be a choice, and soon there will be a market.

      This is what freedom is all about. This is what socialist societies will

    • Many more can afford this. Considering what some people have put into weddings 10k won't be that bad of a fix. Also, factor in what it would cost for 2 or 3 good cruises and you can pay for this trip very easily.

  • Given the various problems during at least two of the last SpaceShipOne flights, I don't think tourists should fly on that thing yet.

    Hopefully they'll spend some of that $10M price money for further development and getting rid of the little glitches they've had.

  • So which tourists will be the first.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by tktk ( 540564 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:56PM (#10442062)
    ...to join the 65 Mile High Club?
  • Q. Why is 7 UP the official sponsor of SpaceShipOne?
    A. Because they couldn't get Pepsi.

    Boom! Tish!

    Ooop. Wrong space vehicle for that old joke. :-}

  • the real deal is... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BigGerman ( 541312 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:57PM (#10442071)
    ..inter-continental transportation.
    Compare number of people who would pay for a ride on SpaceShipOne vs. number of people who would pay for something more practical - say getting you and two bags to Hawaii in 1.5 hours.
    Imagine a SSO like design big enough for 20 people and second stage and launched at 45 degrees instead of vertical. Any rocket scientists in here to calculate what a range of something like that might be?

    • Re:the real deal is... (Score:5, Funny)

      by TheFlyingGoat ( 161967 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:02PM (#10442160) Homepage Journal
      Is the SSO-like design African or European? ;)

    • Envelope Says: 15% of the way from LA to Hawaii (Score:4, Informative)

      by thpr ( 786837 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:26PM (#10442534)
      So White Knight flies to 50K feet... then releases SSO.

      Current SSO Boost is 85nm vertical; thus, fired at 45' you get about 60nm out; about 50nm out on the way back down to about 80K feet... then you start to glide (this assumes no friction to slow you so nothing to glide on above 80K). While SSO covered 35nm from launch from White Knight, you can probably get a lot more (call it 75 on this envelope), but you're WAY, WAY short of making it to Hawaii. Compared to a glider, SSO will drop like a rock.

      I imagine the total coverage by SSO could be about 200nm + flight by White Knight, which is perhaps another 200nm. That's only about 2500 miles short if launched from Los Angeles.

  • I wonder if they will fix the roll issues in the SSO technology before taking people into space.

    Or maybe this is just a race to make a LOT of money w/ no regard to safety?

    • Or maybe this is just a race to make a LOT of money w/ no regard to safety?
      Sure, since a spaceship blowing up with a bunch of tourists will not deter the next persons in line at all...
  • As long as I can stop and have a quick Horizon Pop before I take the reentry plunge....SIGN ME UP!
    That should be the next big goal. Open the first Bar in space. Perhaps one could get a bit of Duty free shopping done. Hmmm...and about income tax...well, seeing as you are literally out of this rold...tax? What tax?

  • If I had $100,000 to throw away ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by arhar ( 773548 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:05PM (#10442199)
    .. I would DEFINITELY do it. I mean, when I was in Vegas, I've seen people waste that and more in a single night at the roulette table. And not really give a shit afterwards. If I was in that position financially, I would definitely spend that on space tourism.

  • Its All Fun and Games... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cyngus ( 753668 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:07PM (#10442223)
    Until the first craft explodes. I mean this quite seriously. I think people will be enamored with the idea of commercial space flight initially, but if the first accident comes early on, its reputation could be damaged for a long time. On the other hand (you have other fingers), if it becomes a pretty accepted thing before the first accident happens, then no big deal, it will be an accident and the industry will recover.

    Commercial space flight is important for space flight in general. As soon as it becomes something that people want to do, private industry will pour money into developing better travel methods, and will spend that money better than the government. With a little luck, NASA's research budget won't have to as big, because innovations from private industry will get some of the work done for them.
    • Yeah.

      the first car crash really did in the car industry.

      the first bus crash ended children's transportation to school.

      the only way you could be right is for space travel to remain in the confines of government only trip[s

    • The safety threshold for SS1 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jesterzog ( 189797 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:54PM (#10443598) Journal

      Until the first craft explodes. I mean this quite seriously.

      This is something I was wondering about myself. When NASA developed the Apollo missions, they were designed in anticipation of about a 90% success rate for each mission. (I believe it was about this and someone can correct me if they know otherwise, but it certainly wasn't incredibly safe.)

      I'd be interested to know what the safety goals of Scaled Composites were with their design, what can be done if something goes wrong, and how it relates to commercial viability. Presumably it's much higher than 9 in 10 successes, and there are likely to be plans to work a lot on safety before any serious potential commercial partners would want to be involved. But does this translate to 99/100 successful flights, 999/1000 successful flights, or even better?

      So far we've seen two properly successful test flights. That's less than 1/50th of what we've seen of the US Space Shuttle. (Granted that it's far less complicated.)

  • Eggs in space (Score:3, Funny)

    by giminy ( 94188 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:11PM (#10442300) Homepage Journal
    Last one into space is a rotten egg!

    And the first one into space is an egg whose shell has cracked open due to lack of air pressure, whose yolk then boiled as all the water evaporated into vaccum, and who was then incinerated upon re-entry.

    Call me a cynic, but I'd wait a little while to be going into space, even if you can afford it.

  • I've been to space but it was really depressing (Score:4, Funny)

    by xutopia ( 469129 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:17PM (#10442380) Homepage
    gravity really pull you down.

  • SpaceShipOne gets 4% of orbital energy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Phil Karn ( 14620 ) <karn@@@ka9q...net> on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:21PM (#10442449) Homepage
    Before everybody gets swept up in all the hype and euphoria, remember that altitude -- even 100 km -- is easy. Staying in space is the hard part. That takes kinetic energy, a lot of it. The potential energy at 100km is less than 4% of the total kinetic + potential energy it takes to stay in a 100km orbit, which is actually much too low to be stable.

    SpaceShipOne is for quickie suborbital jaunts only. Rutan is still far, far away from reaching orbit. Your $100K or whatever would buy you just 3.5 minutes of weightlessness at about $475/second. If you're willing to give up the view (SpaceShipOne's windows aren't that great anyway), you can experience weightlessness a lot more cheaply on an airplane ($3K for several 20-second periods) or for 6.5 seconds on the "Superman: The Escape" ride at Six Flags. A full-price Six Flags ticket is $47, so that's only $7.20/second even if you only ride once!

    • Before everybody gets swept up in all the hype and euphoria, remember that altitude -- even 100 km -- is easy

      For $10 million dollars, why didn't you do it years ago then? I know what your point is but I think there is a pendulum reaction going on here. Some guys are saying, SpaceShipOne is better than the Space Shuttle, which makes guys like you come back with something absurd saying that 100 km is nothing at all.

      In reality, and objectively speaking, somewhere in the middle of these two extremist v

  • Beyond Tourism (Score:5, Insightful)

    by randall_burns ( 108052 ) <randall_burns@@@hotmail...com> on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:26PM (#10442523)
    Tourism may be the main result of the Ansari X prize. However, some of the contestants, have been designing systems with clear orbital capabilities(i.e. John Carmacks's team). Once things go orbital, a lot of commercial options open up beyond tourism. Satellites get cheap. We can start to look seriously at material science applications.

  • 1 Step Missing (Score:4, Funny)

    by clinko ( 232501 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:31PM (#10442585) Journal
    Technology has an obvious path you're missing the middle step before common man.

    1. Military
    2. PORN
    3. Common Man

  • YES! My wife only had ONE xtreme sport veto... (Score:3, Funny)

    by potus98 ( 741836 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:14PM (#10443122) Journal

    ...and she used it years ago to veto skydiving! Mwha ha ha ha haaaaa! I'm allowed to fly in space! Yipee!

    I can hear her now: "We agreed on one expreme sport veto, but I still have an extreme travel veto that hasn't been used. And oh yea, I have an endless supply of sex vetos. Choose wisely."

  • Deception Point anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Alan ( 347 ) <arcterexNO@SPAMufies.org> on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:28PM (#10443263) Homepage
    Anyone read Dale Brown's "Deception Point"? A fun book by the same author of The Davinci Code. Anyway, in it it brought up the dangers (or supposed dangers) of commercializing space. Basically if you gave corporations like say, pepsi, free reign to go into space as they pleased, do you think they would be more concerned with:

    a) putting a huge "Drink Pepsi" sign on the moon or
    b) continuing the mostly and un-exciting scientific research that NASA currently does.

    No offense to corporations, but they are there to make money, and investing a billion dollars to put an earth orbiting banner up is going to satisfy their shareholders more than searching for the origins of the universe. Taken to an extreme think about space and the skies above us being as littered with advertising and crap as the roads and buildings and entertainment that we are subjected to every day are. How long before every shuttle is as littered with badges as a Nascar is?

    Maybe it's the 'slippery slope' argument, but the book did a good job of explaining why NASA is in "control" of space and not the corporations.
    • I take it you havn't read Robert A. Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon. [amazon.com] D. Delos Harriman is a person hero of mine, and this is an interesting book by itself. It also gets into the legal issues of owning non-terrestial real-estate and a very interesting view on how American business really works, not just how it should on paper.

      In this book, Heinlein specifically mentions a 7-up ad on the moon (he called it a 6+ soft drink, which I suppose could be anything), and to make things really fun (keep in mind this was written in the 1950's) the protaganist throws a hammer and sickle on a overlay over the moon during a board meeting that includes some FAA representatives.

      Of any of the early science fiction that is inspiring the X-Prize and private commercial spaceflight, I would have to say that this book is clearly very influential, and it wouldn't surprise me to see a company called "Harriman Industries" get involved with spaceflight some time in the future, if only to invoke the flavor of Heinlein's future history.

      A sad footnote in the book was that the main guy behind the whole project, Harriman, was denied from going into space due to poor health, and the FAA wouldn't give him clearance to get on a spaceship.

  • Mixing of stories (Score:3, Informative)

    by BenFranske ( 646563 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:53PM (#10443588) Homepage

    Seems to me that someone has been mixing a lot of stories to come up with this! I actually listened to the press conferences and X Prize coverage. Let me explain what they really said:

    • First, the check hasn't even been handed over that I've heard. This ceremony will take place in St. Louis, it did not take place at Mojave, that was just the announcement of a winner.
    • Second, yes Virgin has licenced some of the technology and has asked Scaled to build 5 ships carrying 5 passengers, note these are not built or tested! It will still be a few years until they are ready.
    • Next, 7UP did announce they will be giving away a trip on one of those Virgin flights. Of course the ships still need to be built and tested as noted above. They were non-committal as to if it will be one of the first flights so this could be even longer off, so don't start looking under those caps yet.
    • Space adventures may indeed be collecting payments on flights. You have to be a sucker to buy one though because Virgin isn't selling tickets yet and they are the only people who have licenced the technology. It's a bit fuzzy as to what your $10K gets you from space adventures and who's providing the $100K flights.
    • Who said anything about $100K flights anyway? When the CEO of Virgin was asked about it he said to expect more like $250K flights.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm as excited about this as the next guy. $250K is still a bargain in today's market, but mixing those stories together made it a lot more exciting sounding than it really is.

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