Flyguy

You know, it's cool and everything that spaceship one won the whole thing, but I've been thinking (and I'm going to dissent from the majority here) what are they ultimately trying to accomplish here? Are we talking about building a zero G hotel in space so one corporation (live virgin) can make millions upon millions of dollars from the wealthiest people on earth who want to take a ride? Or are we talking about jumpstarting the advancement of technology to help us get into space and start exploring our solar system and the rest of the galaxy to help better mankind? I really hope it's the latter. All this racing to win 10 million bucks just to put a hotel in lower earth orbit which would have no real purpose other than making money just cheapens the whole idea of their version of space exploration in my opinion. I haven't heard one peep about using this technology to help mankind, just to startup the "space tourism industry."

This just seems like they're doing it for all the wrong reasons. The people on this rock already feed from their constant desire to acquire more wealth and in doing so, anything that can potentially help the people on this planet become second priority, if that.

shakran

I think the answer is both.

Ok, so we want to start space tourism. It'll start off with rides into space, but travellers will get tired of that. They'll want the space hotel, so we'll get that. Then they'll want to go to the moon so businesses will figure out how to do that (and they'll do it safer than NASA ever did it because now we're risking customers' lives and their families can sue). Well now that we have tourism on the moon we need to support the tourism industry, so we'll start a freight industry going to the moon to bring food, toiletries, and lemon-soaked paper napkins (10 points to whoever gets that reference) to the moon hotel.

One business might be there to begin with, but startup consumer industries tend to be a bit like reality shows. Once one company is successful in the new business, others get on board pretty quick. Happened with computers, cell phones, cars, and literally every other product we buy and service we pay for. It'll happen with space tourism.

That will lead to lower costs to get people into space. Eventually it'll be pretty cheap to launch 1,000 pounds worth of people into space, and that means it'll be cheap to launch 1,000 pounds of anything into space. That will lead to a huge increase in exploration of space, colonization of the moon and mars, mining of asteroids, etc etc etc.

throughout history it's always been the businesses and private entities that have sparked real advances.

Columbus found America because he wanted to find a faster route to get cargo from India to Europe.

Henry Ford invented the assembly line because he wanted to sell more cars to more people.

the Wright Brothers invented the airplane because they thought humans should fly. In only 60 or so years, we went from a plane which barely flew faster than people can run, and only flew for 12 seconds, to having planes that can cross the United States in less than an hour (SR-71). In the 101 years since the Wright Flyer flew we've developed planes that can carry hundreds of people at nearly the speed of sound for thousands of miles. We've even developed a supersonic passenger plane, and we developed it so long ago that it's now retired after decades of service. In other words, businesses saw the money earning potential of airplanes and developed them at an astonishingly fast pace - so fast that the first jet appeared about 40 years after the first airplane appeared. And most of the history of aviation advances has been done without powerful computer-aided design. Imagine how fast we can develop space travel now.

And now Rutan is working with SpaceshipOne because he wants to put people in space.


The government sponsored program (NASA) has been doing a frankly lousy-assed job of it. We went to the moon a few times to show the Russians we could do it. We only sent a geologist on the LAST mission (WTF did we go to the moon for then!) and we've never been back since despite the huge promise it holds for us. We design the space shuttle as a proof-of-concept vehicle - it was a test bed to see if a reusable space vehicle was possible, and was supposed to be replaced with the real thing once we found out it worked. It never was and we've now lost two shuttles because 1) the shuttle was never meant to be a production vehicle and 2) NASA is farking stupid when it comes to taking safety risks.

It's only when you get private industry involved that you get faster, cheaper, and safer results. If corporations had been involved in 1981 when the shuttle debuted, we'd already have a taxi service to and from the moon. We'd have people living on the moon. We'd probably either already be on, or be seriously moving toward being on, mars, and we'd be doing it for chump change compared to what one shuttle flight that puts a max of 6 people in orbit for an absolute max of one month costs us now.

Flyguy

Another way to think about it. Good commentary.

Cynthetiq

the rich always are at the forefront... from sailing ships to airplanes to cars. They are the ones that were on the "cutting edge" because they could afford it.

Eventually those things get brought down to the masses.

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ARTelevision

Many of us have posted our opinions on this and there is an ongoing discussion here:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=55724

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sherpahigh

Shakran hit the nail on the head there with all of that.

It'll start off as rich people going for rides and it will grow from there. It's the same kind of idea as when NASA first went to the moon. All the technology they ended up with and the advancments that were made while trying to get to the moon ended up benifiting society as a whole. I think the same kind of thing will happen with this and with the quest to go to Mars.

I do believe that Shakran is right about the private sector being key to faster, cheaper and safer space travel though.

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TheAgent

I think some of the importance here lies in pushing NASA a bit. NASA can see that this team went from having nothing to having a ship capable of rocketing into space for a fraction of the cost of one NASA mission, as well as the fact that this team went about things in a rather unconventional way - I think its always good for the private sector to get involved in such things, because anytime there is profit to be made, innovations tend to be prevalent. While we might not all benefit from space-travel anytime soon, I would bet that within a couple of decades, "space cruises" will be somewhat common (although probably still fairly pricey).

ncgti

Just like they said in "The Right Stuff" - No Bucks, No Buck Rogers. To second that earlier thought, if there is money to be made then commercial space travel, exploration... will become a viable industry.

OzOz

"the shuttle was never meant to be a production vehicle"

Actually, Shuttle *was* meant to be a production vehicle, with the original plan being for some fifty flights per year and a turn-around time of two weeks after each flight. These vehicles were meant to take over ALL of NASA's orbital launch requirements once they were up and running. NASA actually closed down the production lines for most American boosters by the mid-1980's. Shuttle was meant to provide cheap, reliable access to space, rendering the old expendable and expensive boosters unnecessary.

In fact, of course, it has done neither. While launch costs of around $50 million per flight were touted by NASA, this was only ever "achieved" with lots of creative accounting and government subsidies. The true cost is over ten times higher, and, with the turn-around time being on the order of months rather than days or weeks, the launch rate is now only about four flights per year (or rather, when it's flying it is). One thing that it appears that NASA "overlooked" in its first costing estimates was the biggest expense: people. It takes (or certainly did at one stage) about seventeen thousand signatures from ground crew to certify a vehicle to be ready for flight - EVERY time it flies! That is just the end of a lot of maintenance work. Imagine how much an overseas flight would cost if a 747 required a similar level of maintenance every time it touched down! As for reliability, Shuttle has had two extended stand-down periods following fatal incidents in which the vehicle and all aboard were lost. Hardly a shining example of reliability.

There was supposed to be a successor vehicle, the VentureStar, developed jointly by NASA and Lockheed Martin and selected for development in 1996. It was supposed to be 100% reusable. A smaller scale technology demonstration vehicle, the X-33, never reached flight status, after repeated problems with fabricating key components, such as the fuel tanks made from composite materials. The whole project was abandoned after the X-33 was cancelled.

tropple

The Japanese have had an orbital hotel scheduled for 2020 on the boards for about five years.

Spaceship One being a prototype of orbital launchers to come is an example of how things will be provided the planet isn't taken down by religious fanatics.

Getting off this ball is the key to species survival.

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shakran

http://www.johnwyoung.com/main/experimental.htm

from that site: