See the stars from Spaceport America

BrynS

Mr Kat says...
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo sub-orbital spacecraft, due to begin operating commercial flights in 2008, will be based at a permanent launch base in New Mexico from 2010 called Spaceport America, according to this article.

I like the name, very Justice League. :D How cool would it be to show family and friends the tickets...

Departing: Spaceport America
Destination: The Stars!

Just a pity the cost will be out of reach of us mere mortals for at least the next decade. :p

Cheers,


Bryn
 
That's cool, I do remember the first commercial spaceport being officially licensed in New Mexico some months ago. I guess it's been renamed. $200,000 for 15 minutes in suborbit sounds like a lot, but I guess the selling point is that it's way below the $20 million to Mir. Another 99% reduction like that and everyone really will be able to try it.
 
Give it a few more years...it should theoretically come down. I'm hoping that by the time I'm 40ish it will be affordable for me to go.
 
Maj.Striker said:
Give it a few more years...it should theoretically come down. I'm hoping that by the time I'm 40ish it will be affordable for me to go.

Based on that... you're... what, 3 years old now? ;)

J/K... I just don't know that space travel is a thing for my life time, and I'm only 21. I just have my doubts. But, hey, I'm a cynic.

Nu
 
NuAngel said:
J/K... I just don't know that space travel is a thing for my life time, and I'm only 21. I just have my doubts. But, hey, I'm a cynic.
Didn't they say the same kind of thing a while back about those 2 brothers and thier crazy flying machine?
 
They certainly did say that about the Wright Brothers. Let's turn back the clocks shall we? Let's say someone was our age when the Wright Brothers first flew. It was only a few decades later that commercial airliners became quite affordable. People in their early 20's when Flier first flew were flying themselves when they were old men.

I'm almost certain that we will all have a chance someday to take a trip into space. I would like that. I wouldn't pay $200,000 for a flight, or $40,000. So I'll be waiting a long time for the price to drop. But I'm confident it will so all I have to do is live to old age and I'll be set. ;)
 
Looks like a trip to the edge of our atmosphere will be a one time deal per family for a while. At least until the cost is down to just a percentage of the fuel plus whatever extra is always included.

Also, it may have taken several decades for affordable comm. flight to come about a century ago, but things tend to be much faster passed now-a-days as far turning something expensive to "produce" into something cheap and profitable (relatively speaking of course).
 
Iceblade said:
Looks like a trip to the edge of our atmosphere will be a one time deal per family for a while.

People who can afford the $1 million ticket for a 3 hour family trip have a lot more money than that laying around. Conversely, people who can only afford to do this once won't be doing it once.

Iceblade said:
At least until the cost is down to just a percentage of the fuel plus whatever extra is always included.

That's already the case for these $200,000 flights. Factoring fuel, research, development & construction, infrastructure costs and so on, they'll be losing money, at least at first. The Virgin founder has a $6 billion personal fortune though, so losing a few hundred million dollars on something like this could easily be an acceptable cost for getting your name out there as the first company to begin regular commercial passenger space flights.

Iceblade said:
Also, it may have taken several decades for affordable comm. flight to come about a century ago, but things tend to be much faster passed now-a-days as far turning something expensive to "produce" into something cheap and profitable.

Maybe in some sort of big broad terms, but trying to apply something like that here doesn't work. You could make that case in 1970 looking back at the last dozen years, but it's been another 35 years since then with zero access for regular people, so the comparison is already broken.
 
In the same vein, did you guys see the coverage of Bigelow Aerospace's technology demonstrator, Genesis 1?

Utilizing the TransHAB technology developed by NASA during the Mid 90's and later killed off by Rep Dana Rorabacher(sp?) using a line item proscription, Bigelow Aerospace has developed the baseline for a new form of space station using composite skinned/shelled inflatable habitation modules.

Genesis 1 was launched from a Southern Russia launch site on top of a converted Russian ICBM (I believe they call it Dnepr - the same baseline launch vehicle for Sea Launch). It has reached orbit, inflated successfully, and sent back live data.

http://www.bigelowaerospace.com

Edit: Whoa! I checked earlier today and they just had some basic news items...looks like they've posted videos from on board and other info....highly recommended, this is exciting stuff! :)
 
Back
Top