Two Radically Different Approaches to Private Access to Space (gizmag.com) 44
Zothecula writes: Commercial spaceflight company World View came a step closer to carrying tourists to the edge of space with a successful test flight last weekend. At Page, Arizona, a one-tenth scale replica spacecraft was carried by high-altitude ballon to a height of 100,475 ft (30,624 m) to demonstrate the technology that is intended for use in a full-size version slated to begin commercial flights next year. And with a note on the other end of the size spectrum for private access to space, reader Habberhead writes: As reported first by Wired Magazine and followed on by others including Discovery News, start-up company ThumbSat is aiming to provide turn-key access to space for students, experimenters and citizen scientists with a new femto-satellite and creative business model. Small payloads and experiments in space for $20k, including the launch? Sign me up!
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That quote was made about 70 years ago when computers were in their infancy, kind of like commercial space flight is right now. My mind can not even comprehend what we might accomplish in the next 70.
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SpaceX is commercial spaceflight. OSC is commercial spaceflight. Cheapo rockets that pop nearly straight up to 100km then fall back down aren't anything like commercial spaceflight. They're built around a very different flight envelope, very different performance characteristics, and consequently don't share much more in common than needing a pressure vessel. These things are joy rides for the wealthy.
I care about companies working to bring down actual access to space - that is, reaching orbit. These toys
Re: Private access to space? (Score:2)
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"Airtight craft" are FYI anything but new and anything but rare. And as covered extensively above, when you're given way, way more mass you can throw around, you're never going to choose the difficult solution that actually going to orbit requires, you're going to pick some cheap solution for your "sealed craft", your "seats", your "suits" (most plans either call for no suits or jet pilot suits), your li
Re: None of this is access to space (Score:1)
I have it on good authority that we are just cows. Slashdot tells me so every day!
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I have it on good authority that we are just cows. Slashdot tells me so every day!
So, you have been cowed into thinking you are a cow.
Your post failed to moove me at all in rating your post as funny!
Tim S.
Re:None of this is access to space (Score:5, Insightful)
Please tell me about these exciting problems you think you'll solve floating around in a deadly vacuum towards empty hostile rocks. That's better?
Recycling of resources is the obvious huge one. Extracting space resources for use on Earth is another.
Only Space Nutters look at a planet teemng with life and water nad air and think they have to leave, but look at empty, hostile, dry, barren, radiation-blasted Hells and think "abundant water".
That teeming life also means Earth is poorly suited for a lot of industrial uses. Doing heavy industry in desolate places of space means we can get those benefits without the usual consequences of doing them on Earth (like massive pollution).
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Please tell me about these exciting problems you think you'll solve floating around in a deadly vacuum towards empty hostile rocks.
99% sure you're just a troll, but whatever. How about getting us off this rock before we're wiped out by an asteroid? Or getting us off this rock before our population expands to the point where it can no longer sustain us?
In the early days of exploration, you'd be the guy sitting in his cottage railing against explorers and their new-fangled "new world" when we have a "perfectly good" cow pasture right here.
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I'm not sure if anyone's told you, but there are asteroids in space, too.
Space nutters are going to cheat death by having an asteroid kill them on Mars instead of in their nice warm beds on Earth.
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"Space nutters" are far more likely to die on launch, in space, on landing/impact and by any major malfunction of the base. Humanity is hedging its bets, the space travelers are most certainly not. There's plenty good arguments against it like that we totally lack the technology to create and sustain a colony independent of earth, you don't need to make up shitty and false ones. In fact many have volunteered for a one-way trip that would probably lead them to an early grave, that's as far from cheating deat
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Several hundred years ago a bunch of men nailed together a bunch of dead trees, left their warm beds, and set sail across a barren, desolate, hostile ocean. They left behind real, tangible, and local problems in the hope of adventure, gold, glory, and a better life.
Today we celebrate their bravery (bravado, whatever) and glorify their achievements. We named an entire continent after one of them.
Exploration is not about immediate returns. We do these things not because they are easy, but because we can.
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Leaving millions of dead native Americans.
And commercial space travel is not about "space exploration".
I don't think that leaving it is
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I am a big fan of hedging my bets but, at the same time, I'm not sure I want humans spreading out to the galaxy like cockroaches. The reality is that we will eventually be hit by some extinction event that eliminates all human life on this planet. This is not optional, it will happen. There is no (realistic) way around this.
Now, I'm almost okay with that but let's pretend that I'm not a raging asshole (if only for the sake of argument). I don't think I'm a space nutter to implicitly state that we need to ge
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I'm pretty sure human beings are going to be their own extinction event.
I'm not against space exploration, but the private sector isn't about space exploration. And they're certainly not looking to hedge your bets or my bets or anyone's bets besides their own. And they're not doing it because they're worried about any asteroid.
I'm crabby tonight because my fantasy football team is in the to
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I just want to say... I understand.
Actually, the young lady has never been to Europe and we were talking about going. I've got to get down to Florida and out to Nevada and then back to Maine first. I'm still in Buffalo. I have no excuses. *sighs*
However, if I get over to that area - I'll smuggle back a few bottles. You probably think I'm kidding but, no... I just might. Two for my cabinet and one to send by mail. ;-) I'd like to revisit the former Yugoslavia area. Good people but I don't speak *any* of the
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Space nutters
Damn, Pope; when you're not posting insightful stuff (which you admittedly do, on occasion), you're really quite the douche.
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How about getting us off this rock before we're wiped out by an asteroid?
Apart from the area directly under the splat, Earth immediately after a dino-killer asteroid strike will still be more habitable by a large margin than anywhere else in the solar system.
Or getting us off this rock before our population expands to the point where it can no longer sustain us?
This argument has more merit. The biggest threat to humans is almost certainly other humans and one sure fire way to get humans to behave badly is to cut off their resources so they end up fighting each other over what remains.
The trouble is: Earth has an awful lot of easy accessible resources. Flowing water works to separ
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Please name the meaningful problem "a one-tenth scale replica spacecraft was carried by high-altitude ballon to a height of 100,475 ft " solved.
It's a step towards the full scale version. They're testing manufacture techniques, technologies, telemetry, and launch procedures.
If you can float in the air, it is NOT space (Score:3)
one-tenth scale replica spacecraft
it's not a spacecraft! It's not going to space!
was carried by high-altitude ballon to a height of 100,475 ft (30,624 m)
30 km is not space!
Memorize this: if you can float in the air, you are still in the air.
So, if you can float in the air, it's not space.
Not even close to the Karman line (Score:3)
Odd choice of name... (Score:2)
Obligatory Zoolander quote? (Score:4, Funny)
At Page, Arizona, a one-tenth scale replica spacecraft was carried by high-altitude balloon
What is this, tourism for ants?! It has to be at least...3 times bigger than this!
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Yes. :P
"Sign him up..." (Score:2)
rockets easier to design than spaceplanes? (Score:2)
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SpaceShipTwo is having a hard time becoming commercial. At least six years so far beyond their announced launch date. Perhaps too much new technology, too many parts ...
The big problem with SS2 is that it was a quick kludge to win the X-Prize, and the design just hasn't scaled up the way they expected it to... new technology might well have made it more likely to succeed.