SpaceX's All-Tourist Crew Safely Splashes Back Down to Earth (cnbc.com) 112
Watch the video here!
"SpaceX safely returned its Crew Dragon spacecraft from orbit on Saturday, with the capsule carrying the four members of the Inspiration4 mission back to Earth after three days in space..." reports CNBC: "Thanks so much SpaceX, that was a heck of a ride for us and we're just getting started!" Inspiration4 commander Jared Isaacman said from the capsule after touching down.
Elon Musk tweeted his congratulations to the crew shortly after splashdown.
The historic private mission — which includes Isaacman, pilot Sian Proctor, medical officer Hayley Arceneaux and mission specialist Chris Sembroski — orbited the Earth at an altitude as high as 590 kilometers, which is above the International Space Station and the furthest humans have traveled above the surface in years. A free-flying spaceflight, the capsule did not dock with the ISS but instead circled the Earth independently at a rate of 15 orbits per day.
Inspiration4 shared photos from the crew's time in orbit, giving a look at the expansive views from the spacecraft's "cupola" window.
This is the third time SpaceX has returned astronauts from space, and the second time for this capsule — which previously flew the Crew-1 mission for NASA on a trip that returned in May.
"SpaceX safely returned its Crew Dragon spacecraft from orbit on Saturday, with the capsule carrying the four members of the Inspiration4 mission back to Earth after three days in space..." reports CNBC: "Thanks so much SpaceX, that was a heck of a ride for us and we're just getting started!" Inspiration4 commander Jared Isaacman said from the capsule after touching down.
Elon Musk tweeted his congratulations to the crew shortly after splashdown.
The historic private mission — which includes Isaacman, pilot Sian Proctor, medical officer Hayley Arceneaux and mission specialist Chris Sembroski — orbited the Earth at an altitude as high as 590 kilometers, which is above the International Space Station and the furthest humans have traveled above the surface in years. A free-flying spaceflight, the capsule did not dock with the ISS but instead circled the Earth independently at a rate of 15 orbits per day.
Inspiration4 shared photos from the crew's time in orbit, giving a look at the expansive views from the spacecraft's "cupola" window.
This is the third time SpaceX has returned astronauts from space, and the second time for this capsule — which previously flew the Crew-1 mission for NASA on a trip that returned in May.
Re:so much fuel spent (Score:5, Informative)
A Falcon 9 burns 29600 gallons of RP1 (a refined kerosone / jet fuel). A 777-300 with a full tank carries 45220 gallons of jet fuel. It's well less than if they had rented a single 777-300 and flown it on a single-leg transatlantic flight.
Is that a lot? Well, kinda? But also surprisingly low too.
Of course, Falcon 9/Dragon is only a stopgap for Starship.
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With the difference that they transported about 2% of the passengers of a 777-300. By that logic, my old Diesel engine car is not really that big a deal because it has slightly better fuel efficiency than a doppel decker bus.
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With the difference that they transported about 2% of the passengers of a 777-300
That's not a useful comparison because people who can afford this kind of space travel are not going to travel in a best-case way anyway. They're going to be taking a charter with much less than full capacity. That's why the GP made the comparison they made, and they stated as much in their comment.
By that logic, my old Diesel engine car is not really that big a deal because it has slightly better fuel efficiency than a doppel decker bus.
Depends on how you measure. It surely emits more NOx but also won't have the technology that modern vehicles use to make soot more hazardous, i.e. DPF.
More hazardous soot? (Score:2)
Are you referring to this?
DPF manufacturers have recommended a variety of filter cleaning techniques to remove the accumulated ash. A standard method for cleaning DPFs is using "Bake and Blow" machines, which routinely yields ash that can be categorized as Non RCRA Hazardous Waste based on the amount of zinc it contains.
https://redfoxresources.com/bl... [redfoxresources.com]
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Nope, has nothing to do with the ash. The DPF's job is to burn soot. In the process it does produce ash, but it also produces CO2 and finer soot. PM2.5 soot is a known carcinogen because it is irritating and persistent in the lungs; being smaller than cilia, the cilia cannot sweep it out, and it doesn't get removed until it gets trapped in some sputum and expelled. Normal diesels produce mostly big chunky funky soot that is visible, while DPF'd diesels and gassers produce PM2.5 soot which is difficult to de
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Also WRT zinc it should not actually contain any significant amount of zinc if you use the correct oil, because the zinc used to be the primary wear additive in diesel oil but it was taken out of the modern oil formulations to avoid spoiling catalysts. This is for example the big difference between Delo 400 and Delo 400 LE, the latter has had the zinc removed and I presume replaced with something else. But if you have an older diesel (one which pre-dates DPF as it is known today) then you WANT the zinc, and
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It's about five flights in a private jet.
Your old diesel isn't that big a deal. Several million of them are.
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You mean all those rich people out there are driving fuel-efficient yachts?
Re:so much fuel spent (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong Dudley Downer (Score:1, Insightful)
Space tourism. Very cool in principal, terrible for the environment in practice.
More stupid "environmental" short-term thinking.
In reality, they learned more about how average people do in space.
In reality, this is another step forward to replacing jet planes with far more efficient rocket travel between continents.
In the long term, this lets people expand beyond the earth, and acquire resources from places other than our planet.
This big, dream big, don't gripe small.
Re: Wrong Dudley Downer (Score:1)
In reality, this is another step forward to replacing jet planes with far more efficient rocket travel between continents.
Ballistic travel will never be cheaper than cruising in a liftting-body, at least not energy-wise.
Looks cheaper to me (Score:1)
Ballistic travel will never be cheaper than cruising in a liftting-body, at least not energy-wise.
Look at the various calculations of fuel per passenger, they say otherwise.
I think you forget you are dealing with a lot of overall air resistance you are powering through for an international flight. A point to point flight to anywhere on earth via orbital flight costs about the same, as once you reach space there's not really any extra energy cost to travel anywhere along the orbital path.
Leaving orbit proba
The word you were looking for is "visionary" (Score:1)
All I am, is a person who broadcasts the most obvious visions of the future because they have so many forces combining to make them true eventually.
This is why I make people so mad, because my logic is not just irrefutable, but inevitable.
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your great grandpa said human flight was impossible and had the math to prove it. also, that the dung from horses would bury New York City before 1950 in nine feet of poop.
You have no logic at all, just guesses.
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Visions are not engineering,
Ahh but it is.
To be visionary involves a deep understanding of engineering, in order to divine what is possible, even what is likely.
Furthermore it is that combined with an understanding of people, and of money. That is why visionaries are rare, because not many people try to understand all those things to any depth.
That is something you average hacks will never comprehend, and why the future is ever a surprise to you, whereas overt the year snot much has surprised me. There ar
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A space station as tourist destination seems within engineering possibility in decades. Colony on moon before end of century, and something started on Mars.
To go much beyond that we need better than chemical rockets, we could do fission and pull it off, just have to keep those dirty things in orbit on Earth end. Blasting a nuke rocket off moon or Mars probably would be fine, in a crater far from the colony.
Just engineering problems, nothing impossible there.
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I'm pretty sure someone's carbon footprint has to scale almost linearly to their income and/or wealth, and there's not much they could do about it. For instance, if you made twice as much money, you'd either spend it, save it, or invest it, or some combination. If you spend it, it's likely to be on things that have carbon emissions (food, trips, housing, cars, crap made in China and shipped around the world, it's almost all carbon emissions). If you invest it, you'll buy shares in companies that are high
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> I think the solution is to make carbon emissions more and more expensive, so the market incentivizes us to find clean solutions.
I think slashdot should charge per post so poor people would be incentivized to critically think before submitting.
Re: so much fuel spent (Score:2)
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I think the solution is to make carbon emissions more and more expensive, so the market incentivizes us to find clean solutions.
That sounds great until you realize the truly rich can simply remove anyone from power who tries.
It's fine to say you are for the planet at all, right up until you miss with the elites ability to use private jets.
Also anytime you say you can stop X by charging more, all you are saying is that you want poor people to lose one more thing in life that might be enjoyable, while allowin
Carbon taxes (Re:so much fuel spent) (Score:3)
It's not just the wealthy that will remove from power anyone that imposes a carbon tax, the average voter will do that when they see there transportation and heating costs go up.
It's about time some people recognize the problems with a carbon tax. The only solutions that will withstand scrutiny are those that bring our costs down. Taxes on carbon emitting fuels will not last so long as they are the dominant energy sources. Should we get to a point where carbon emitting fuels are no longer dominant then a
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You can save your rant.
Besides the fact that your reasoning is completely wrong: most of the world already has carbon taxes :P
I'll believe them over some rando on the internet that says electrolysis is too inefficient.
Correct, electrolysis is not inefficient at all. However it does not create synthesized fuel, idiot.
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Oh, look! My cheerleader is back! My mascot, my cheerleader, my biggest fan!
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Second biggest. :P
You did not recognize your biggest fan yet
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most of the world already has carbon taxes :P
Really? [wikipedia.org] The red part of the map doesn't seem to be "most of the world" to me.
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For me it does ...
Or was I off by an odd number of a few million people, or odd number of a few dozen countries?
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For me it does
Are we even looking at the same picture? Because I see something like 24-ish countries in red. There are 195 sovereign states in the world. If 24 out of 195 is "most of the world', then I don't know what to say to that. Population-wise, it will be even worse, considering that places like the US, China, or Russia are not on the list.
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The EU alone has 24 countries ...
Carbon footprint isn't linear (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure someone's carbon footprint has to scale almost linearly to their income and/or wealth, and there's not much they could do about it.
I'm going to have to disagree with this one. Poor people's carbon footprints can be surprisingly huge, as they can't afford any alternative energy choices. Cheapest it is (IE Coal until recently). When it comes to rich people, it can scale all the way from zero(they paid attention) to huge(they're a petro prince).
It doesn't help that incentives in the USA are weighted in such a way that it helps the rich a lot more than it helps the poor. If you make a subsidy a tax deduction, that means somebody paying
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I 'm pretty sure someone's carbon footprint has to scale almost linearly to their income and/or wealth, Nope.
If you spend it, it's likely to be on things that have carbon emissions (food, trips, housing, cars, crap made in China and shipped around the world, it's almost all carbon emissions).
The house etc. is there, regardless if *I* buy it, or someone else. My trips are driven by necessary, not by money I have to spent extra. And I do not buy crap from China.
If you invest it, you'll buy shares in companie
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How many "tonnes" are YOU responsible for? Every time you drive to work, every airplane ride you take, every time you engage in "recreation," every time you even breathe, YOU are contributing to CO2 production. I highly doubt you are "carbon neutral" and as such I am unwilling to take direction from YOU on how I should live my life. If you want to make a contribution to eliminate global warming, stop breathing and have your body composted instead of cremated. Less pollution that way
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Every time you drive to work, every airplane ride you take, every time you engage in "recreation," every time you even breathe
I'll be watching you.
Every single day
Every word you say
Every game you play
Every night you stay
I'll be watching you.
Re: so much fuel spent (Score:2)
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It always warms my heart when other people leave out the closing tag. Thank you.
Yep. Right up there with telling a joke without the
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Nice :)
You could also post this on TFA about Zuck. Where it would go from funny to terrifying. But there's no mod for that.
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every time you even breathe, YOU are contributing to CO2 production. I highly doubt you are "carbon neutral"
Breathing is carbon neutral: idiot!
Re:You cant stop what's coming (Score:1)
ISRU + nuclear fission (Re:so much fuel spent) (Score:2)
The solutions to the environmental impacts of these launches on Earth and the solutions to getting people from Mars back to Earth are identical. This means in-situ resource utilization and nuclear fission power. The plan to get people off the surface of Mars back to Earth is to take in carbon from the air, water from the surface, and energy from nuclear fission to produce the fuel and oxidizer for the rocket. We do that on Earth and there's no net CO2 added to the air.
It's because we need this technology
Re: ISRU + nuclear fission (Re:so much fuel spent) (Score:1)
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"Very cool in principal, terrible for the environment in practice. How many tonnes of co2 are these tourists responsibe for each now?"
A common Billionaire Super-Yacht could run only 205 hours on the fuel that a Falcon 9 launch does.
"Equity" thinking is facile (Score:2)
Life is not a zero-sum game. There are no special behaviors you will have to undertake to "balance" the CO2 emissions generated by private-funded space travel. Not to mention that it's not even possible to trace the difference this activity would make, especially to such a poorly-understood and barely-measurable thing as the dynamic climatic system of an entire water-filled planet!
This is anthropocentric thinking at its worst. You honestly believe that a bunch of billionaires going into orbit is going to co
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Life is not a zero-sum game.
As long as we consume resources more rapidly than they can be replenished (which we do) and emit pollution more rapidly than it can be cleaned from the system (which we also do) then life is a negative-sum game, as playing it is fundamentally unsustainable and predicated upon destruction that is leading to making the game impossible to win, or indeed to even play.
There are no special behaviors you will have to undertake to "balance" the CO2 emissions generated by private-funded space travel.
As long as we are emitting more CO2 than we are fixing (we are) while CO2 is at levels which perturb the system upon which we depend for survival
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Thank you for a reasonable response. Two observations about it:
1. You have moved the scope of the discussion from the environmental impact that may be caused by a small sliver of the population (space-faring billionaires) to the entirety of all humankind. That may be an interesting discussion, but it's not the one we're having here.
2. Where in the world did you get the idea that "humans emit more CO2 than volcanoes"? Volcanism literally formed the planet you're living on.
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Where in the world did you get the idea that "humans emit more CO2 than volcanoes"?
learn to internet pls [google.com]
Wow congratulations to all! (Score:2)
Awesome, so glad everything was smooth, and this paves the way for more adventures in space for average people!
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I guess we're about to find out how many rich people are willing to shell out for the novelty of making a few laps around earth. I suspect it's going to turn out to be a finite market.
Not finite at all (Score:1)
I guess we're about to find out how many rich people are willing to shell out for the novelty of making a few laps around earth. I suspect it's going to turn out to be a finite market.
How finite is International first and business class air travel today? Because that it where prices for this is heading, and eventually people will be using SpaceX rockets daily for intercontinental travel. Even the most awesome private jet pales in comparison.in terms of time to reach a major city on the other side of the g
Re: Not finite at all (Score:2)
I wonder how fast rocket travel will be after youâ(TM)ve counted in travel time to/from the spaceport on both ends of the trip? Spaceports are unlikely to be located near cities, for obvious reasons.
Incorrect (Score:1)
Spaceports are unlikely to be located near cities, for obvious reasons.
You can land a spacecraft on an amount of land way smaller than a traditional airport.
One example of a spaceport that would be used, would be an artificial island in the middle of the New York harbor... so hardly any transit time at all.
In Denver you could easily put a spaceport on the edge of town no more inconvenient to get to than the airport now.
If you are worried about rockets being explodey, they carry less fuel than international
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That's definitely the dream, or vision, if you will. And I think that if we can keep our civilization, we will get there eventually. But launches/landings will need to get at least within an order of magnitude or better, comparing failure rates to airliners. F'rinstance, today's liners are able to fly and land with 75% engine failure.
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A bit of a meaningless statistic, but a Starship will also be able to land with 75% engine failure.
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I didn't know. Impressive.
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Part of SpaceX's strategy is using lots of engines so there's lots of redundancy. We've already seen this on the test launches where they kept crashing until they started lighting multiple engines on landing then shutting down all but the one that was working best.
The reliability of the whole system is the relevant statistic, and engines are a big part of that, but not how many you need. Airliners used to need more than two engines if they wanted to fly over water because it was felt that twin engines didn'
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You can land a spacecraft on an amount of land way smaller than a traditional airport.
The amount of land used is nowhere near the most relevant factor. Jets produce up to about 150dB noise while rockets go up to 200dB. Jets are already too loud to be tolerated right in town, rockets are even louder, so they will have to be further away and not closer.
If you are worried about rockets being explodey, they carry less fuel than international airliners... which fly over all modern cities today.
Slightly less fuel, but they also have the problem that if they lose propulsion they come down wherever they're currently headed, while planes have some glide ability and you can decide where to drop them in most cases.
Anyway this is a silly arg
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I think it will be better. (Score:1)
I have a theory that jet lag will actually be a lot more tolerable when you don't add odd 12+ hours of extremely crappy plane "sleep". And here I am even including the lay-flat seats you can get in business class.
Humorous side story - I was in a lay-flat seat on a flight to South America, when it came time to land the seat wouldn't go back up or do anything at all... so I had to land sitting up myself... not sure that was strictly adherent to regulation...
Awsome. Keep on Elon. (Score:4, Informative)
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As Kruschev said of Alan Shehpard's flight comparing to to Gagarin's: "Around the world, precisely, not just up and down." Hear that Bezos?
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I notice everyone seems to be leaving Branson out of the picture here.
As they should. A short jump up to near internationally recognized space in a dead-end system that will never do anything more is not even playing in the same league.
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Should we "let" people take joyrides into space? If there is a market for it and it helps with the economy of scale of building the more interesting programs, why not?
We "allow" F1 racing, private jets and all number of other things that most people can't afford to participate in that excrete a lot of CO2. The environmental impact whine seems rather disingenuous.
Perhaps people who aren't filthy rich can "slum it" with sub-orbital services offered by Bezos and Branson.
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Jealousy is good when justified.
Extremely big differences in wealth are unjust, therefore jealousy is good.
But of course, religion (10 commandmens) is once more being used as opium for the people.
Many have started to believe they should accept their fate and not be jealous, when a happy few are using up much much more then their fair share of the earths remaining resources and budget.
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But of course, religion (10 commandmens) is once more being used as opium for the people.
Many have started to believe they should accept their fate and not be jealous,
Yeah, those people are total lames. Which is somewhat ironic, because if it were literal and Jesus were real and present, he'd heal them for free. And then he'd remind them that rich people aren't going to heaven.
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Perhaps people who aren't filthy rich can "slum it" with sub-orbital services offered by Bezos and Branson.
But Elon Musk and SpaceX have done more than anyone else to reduce the cost to go to space.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/how-much-cheaper-are-spacex-reusable-rockets-now-we-know/ar-BB19IpqJ [msn.com]
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It surprised me the flight was this short. Were there technical limitations that dictated this? (e.g. life support consumables)
What training did they get? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: What training did they get? (Score:2)
These people got more training but when starship is going steady, the amount of training will be comparable to the short video you get before a flight with maybe more emphasis on space sickness.
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When things go bad, they go bad very quickly. Minor item like minimum launch temperature of SRBs, the operations of a pressure release valve or the stability of foam insulation have killed nearly 2 dozen people out 567 in very spectacular fashion. . Add in 14psi oxygen environment and the why was it not worse over currenting at ta
Why is Tesla worth more that all competitors? (Score:1)
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Yeah... I sure would want to buy a car from Roskosmos... I guess...
How did Elon Musk become so intelligent? (Score:2)
Re: How did Elon Musk become so intelligent? (Score:1)
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Sometimes he does very stupid stuff, too. So far that hasn't affected his business, which is remarkable.
Maybe he's just found some smart people to listen to, which is a fairly smart thing to do in itself to be fair.
I just don't know? they (Score:1)
Not that useless (Score:1)
It doens't matter what the people did (though I had read before they had some experiments planned?) but it was a useful mission in that they got more biometric data about prolonged exposure to weightlessness in average people compared to traditionally pretty fit astronauts.
That alone would be very useful to longer term plans to have more people up in space, longer.
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Operational experience is gained every sortie (Score:4, Interesting)
The meatbags inside matter FAR less than the flights and operational experience. Noobs care about the passengers but every mission is a training sortie for everyone supporting it.
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The meatbags inside matter FAR less than the flights and operational experience. Noobs care about the passengers but every mission is a training sortie for everyone supporting it.
Ah, not to put too fine a point on IT, but one of those "meatbags" kinda PAID for this whole thing.
Meatbags are good for one thing in that aspect. Kinda also happens to be THE thing.
Kudo to all ... however: (Score:2)
However just nitpicking: a passenger is not a member of the crew. Not even in a novel space ship.
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Well, :D
the good thing was: they were not in the "rowing class"
What About Elon? (Score:2)
I think it's fantastic that "civilians" have/are now flying in space. The gates of governmental space programs have been blown open.
But, as I watched the splashdown of this recent flight, I wondered how come Elon hasn't taken a trip? For all his talk about space flight and human flights to Mars, as well as his willingness to spend on the launching of a Tesla into orbit, I would have thought that he would have wanted to get up there himself. Plus, with the other private spaceflight CEOs boasting of their lam
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Plus, with the other private spaceflight CEOs boasting of their lame trips, I'd have thought Elon, the showman, would have wanted to take a trip and mock them.
Elon allegedly wants to take the big trip to Mars, and thinks anything else is jerking off. He's been mocking them without even getting on the rocket, so if the primary goal is mockery then he doesn't have to bother going up himself. He's probably still having enough fun driving plaid-or-beyond-model Teslas that he doesn't need to go to space for a thrill.
Less Elon does *in public* the better/simpler news (Score:1)
And that would be 3 (or more) more days when he wasn't at the helm getting Model Y to Europe (and to RHD).
Besides, the whole flight raised far more money for the cause (children's cancer research) because he *didn't* go.
And he topped it up a bit more.
And then *beyond that*, Imagine the SEC investigation into his $50m contribution (yes, I know a drop in the ocean for his reserves) if he had gone ... someone somewhere would have moaned that he had paid a "preferential" price for the seat to boot.
Uncynically (Score:2)