2014 Will Be a Big Year For Commercial Space Travel 61
An anonymous reader writes "Getting into space is a difficult prospect. The commercial space industry has been making steady progress over the past decade, and they're finally getting to the point where they can be relied upon to transport people and important cargoes. This article makes the case that 2014 will be a turning point for commercial space travel, the year that a nascent industry comes into its own. 'We should — finally — start to see the first flights into space by Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, and perhaps the first commercial flights of that vehicle as well, depending on how well their test program proceeds. In addition, we should also see the first test flights, although not necessarily into space, of XCOR's Lynx vehicle in 2014, and possibly even commercial flights by the end of the year if all goes well,' said Jeff Foust, editor of The Space Review. 'If these companies achieve those long-awaited, and sometimes long-delayed, major milestones, it will go far to erase any lingering doubts that suborbital space tourism is a real market, while also enabling opportunities for using those vehicles in other applications, like suborbital research and technology demonstration.'"
TFA Headline is (Score:2, Informative)
Will Commercial Space Travel Blast Off in 2014?
Hence, no.
2014: The year we mourn Slashdot. (Score:1)
I think that 2014 could very well be the year that we must all mourn Slashdot, especially if they go ahead and replace the current site with the godawful beta site.
We've seen this kind of thing happen before. Just look at Digg v4 for a stunning example of how a web site upgrade can utterly destroy a community. The scariest part is that the Digg v4 site, at its worst, is still comparatively better than the Slashdot beta site.
The correct thing to do, obviously, is to completely discard the Slashdot beta site.
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Re:Nonsense! (Score:5, Funny)
So the Year of Linux on the Desktop... in spaaaace?
Don't forget to define your terms first (Score:4, Insightful)
Reality: A cramped tin can, 10 minute ride to the upper atmosphere, sub-orbital joyride. No aliens, no warp drives, no class-M planets. You're still in the atmosphere, you're still using rockets with the same elements as on the periodic table, no fictional elements or forces. You're not even getting out of the tin can and you're landing right back where you came from.
So sorry. We don't even have the Concorde anymore and I'm supposed to cheer for the thrill rides of people who've somehow managed to game the system to make money while my real wages have been going down for 10 years?
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Losers always claim the rest of us must have 'gamed the system' rather than just worked hard and saved some money along the way.
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And winners always claim that their win is solely their own achievement, and in no way related to luck.
Most successful people I've met admit that luck played a part in their success. Most failures expect to get rich by playing the lottery.
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Well, the easiest way to get rich is to convince your buddies in government to give you a lot of taxpayers' money. Which is why it's odd that the people who complain the most about 'the 1%' also demand more government, which will funnel more money to their buddies.
If the 'anti-1%' left didn't exist, the leeches would have to invent them.
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So sorry. We don't even have the Concorde anymore and I'm supposed to cheer for the thrill rides of people who've somehow managed to game the system to make money while my real wages have been going down for 10 years?
These things give us an opportunity and means to redress the balance, and relieve them of their dubiously-gotten gains. Their decadence today will pay for (a small bit of) progress.
Now all we need to do is to think of other ways to part them from their loot so that more of us can benefit...
Missing the obvious (Score:3)
If these companies achieve those long-awaited, and sometimes long-delayed, major milestones, it will go far to erase any lingering doubts that suborbital space tourism is a real market
How does a successful test of a prototype tell you anything about the demand for it? Silicon Valley landfills are filled with successful prototypes of products you've never heard of.
They need someplace to go and something to do up there. Until consumers can spend a weekend in orbit doing entertaining activities, it's hard to imagine many people willing spend six figures (?) on the trip.
(I'm all for commercial space flight, by the way, I just don't see much consumer demand for it.)
Re:Missing the obvious (Score:5, Informative)
If I remember correctly, Virgin have several hundred deposits from customers already. Last I remember, they were talking about getting the cost down to $50,000 within a decade, at which point I'd seriously consider it myself.
There's clearly demand for these trips. The only question is whether there's enough demand to justify the investment in operating them.
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Then why don't you go to Russia? For half that price you can fly in a MiG to the edge of space. Why not?
That's kind of like asking why anyone would want to fly supersonic in Concorde while drinking champagne, rather than in an F-16.
From what I can find on the web, the Mig only goes to 75,000 feet, which is not space, and you're strapped into an ejection seat, rather than free to move around in zero-g for several minutes.
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No, you don't get it. Like most people paying money for these flights, I'd be paying to go into what is generally accepted as space in relative comfort and safety, and to be able to spend several minutes floating free in zero-g.
None of your alternatives offer that.
So why do you think I'd want to pay thousands of dollars for them?
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Suborbital flight. If you go high enough (c.f. SpaceShip Two) where the air is very thin indeed you can then accelerate to much higher speeds than are possible where the air is thicker (lower down). Then you can fall back down into the air, slow down and land like a plane when you get near your destination. Flying at 15 to 25 times the speed of sound becomes feasible.
I think the point being made is that if SapceShip Two is popular and makes a big profit, there might be money to invest is a sub-orbital liner
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Zero-gravity brothels? I think that'll do it...
Yes, Now that Virgin Galactic Accepts Bitcoin! (Score:1)
Bitcoin is ready for takeoff, and it will take Virgin Galactic along with it!
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I wouldn't say "decisive", but 2014 should be a great year for both Dragon and Dream Chaser. I'm especially looking forward to the first test flights of the Mk-II Dragon with propulsive landing capability. We might even see it flown with a test crew by the end of the year. That would be sweet. Still, neither SpaceX nor SNC expect to get "over the hump" until 2015, though both have ambitious test regimes planned in the meantime.
SpaceX is also planning/hoping to launch their first Falcon Heavy this year, as w
i bet you... (Score:2)
2014 will be... (Score:1)
...a year that the nasdaq and s&p500 have a decent correction bucking the almost continuous upward trend of the last few years, so i doubt there will be any major investment by anyone other than reserve banks, and that companies will continue to hoard cash
why do i predict a stock market correction? because humans are fickle and despite all the talk to stoke confidence in the so-called "recovery", humans are also not stupid... investors aren't in stocks because of confidence in the government or the fed
why wasn't this decades ago? (Score:2)
I find myself keep asking this question though answer is govt never thought private companies can do space (actually there was since 1950s, i.e. Lockheed, Boeing, McDonnell, Convair). It took Scaled Composites with Space Ship One and the CNXT (or CXNT) civilian space shot to demonstrate it can be done. Much of what is happening now is suborbital, much less difficult than orbital space flight, but there are customers besides rich people with a few 200K to blow. There are researchers with projects wanting sub
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But I still ask, how come commercial space didn't happen in 1980s.
Because it needed a few billionaires willing to throw money at it for years with no returns to make it viable.
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But I still ask, how come commercial space didn't happen in 1980s. Was technology too exotic? There was the Soviet threat but no ITAR.
You might want to dig a bit into the history of OTRAG [wikipedia.org] to see some of the difficulties that people faced in the early development of commercial spaceflight. The largest problem was mainly a "giggle factor" where regulators and people involved with even permitting this kind of activity happening. It took Ronald Reagan to pass the Commercial Space Launch Act [berkeley.edu] which in turn created the Office of Commercial Spaceflight [faa.gov] and encouraged government agencies to hire private companies to perform services that previou
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Don't forget... (Score:2)
And also, the year of the Linux desktop!
Try not to confuse wishful thinking for accurate predictors of future trends.
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There's something fundamentally wrong with an operation that provides incredibly expensive distraction (for the rich only) by polluting the atmosphere and failing to provide any socially redeeming value whatsoever.
Nope, there's nothing wrong with that. You describing almost every form of entertainment. (Television uses electricity which means burning more coal)
For another example, consider NASCAR:
There's something fundamentally wrong with an operation that provides incredibly expensive distraction by polluting the atmosphere and failing to provide any socially redeeming value whatsoever.
Oh, wait I left off the "(for the rich only)". Is it OK to pollute the atmosphere for sport if it's enjoyed by the Everyman?
Or are
Travel? To where? (Score:1)
Are any of these ventures actually transporting anyone anywhere other than straight up and straight back down to the same spot? Do any of them ever plan to actually get a human from, say, New York to Tokyo? If not, these services create about as much economic benefit as one of those giant bungie powered slingshot chair thingies you see by the side of the interstate.
On the other hand, the idea of Leonardo DiCaprio, Ashton Kutcher, Justin Beiber, and Richard Branson together in a small area covered in their
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Are any of these ventures actually transporting anyone anywhere other than straight up and straight back down to the same spot?
A few of them are planning to bring humans from the ground to the ISS and back. Does that count?
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A few of them are planning to bring humans from the ground to the ISS and back. Does that count?
MirCorp/Space Adventures already did that, and it was purely for the amusement of their passengers.
There are lots of plans for space thrill rides [wikipedia.org] - some are even planning to go to the moon. [wikipedia.org] I was inquiring about the "non-amusement park" side of the industry - specifically getting a human from point a on earth to point b on earth. There was a time in my career when traveling from the US to Asia occurred fairly frequently, and it was a nightmare. Correct me if I'm wrong, but so far none of these ventures a
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I was inquiring about the "non-amusement park" side of the industry.
I was referring to the "non-amusement park" side of the industry; specifically SpaceX and others of that ilk, who will be ferrying people back and forth to the ISS for work. Space Adventures is a reseller, and MirCorp closed a decade ago, so they don't count.
There are aerospace companies working on SSTs, but the main reason there isn't a lot of suborbital point to point is that you need to have a lot of horizontal velocity to get anywhere, and that horizontal velocity needs to be nullified. The level of
Has to be done in order (Score:3, Funny)
The "big year for commercial space travel" will come right after the "big year for Linux on the desktop".
First things first, after all.
2014? Nope; 2014-2016 is (Score:2)
Starting this year, VG will start flying Scaled's SS2 for sub-orbital flights. Within 2 years after that, 2 more crafts (xcor and Blue Horizon's) will join up and offer competition. That will drive prices down to 100K for all 3 companies.
Then from 2015-2017, 3 companies will fly humans commercially to orbital; SpaceX's Dragon Rider will be first in 2015. Then the next one will be Boeing's CST-100 in 2016, and SNC's DC will be either 2016 or 2017. However,
Hardly (Score:2)
I can't afford a plane ticket to Florida or LA. I don't think I, or anyone I know, will be heading into space anytime soon.
Human Space (Score:1)
We (government and corporate) are going to lose the opportunity to get past low earth orbit due to the minefield of hyper-velocity space junk, now exponentially multiplying by collisions with other space junk. Impact speeds are extremely high - 10Km/sec is not unusual, and at such speeds a sugar cube will blast a hole through most structures. The cleanup, and ongoing orbital insertions (and recapture) needs doing VERY SOON..