So, we have real Spaceships...
polycounter lvl 14
I mean i don't know if you can call them spaceships. As i understand they have suborbital flight paths...
But i dont know.. they look pretty cool to me.
The price though...
http://www.virgingalactic.com/
Edit:
The apogee of the new craft will be approximately 110 km (68 miles) and in the thermosphere, 10 km (6 miles) higher than both the SpaceShipOne target (though the last flight of the SpaceShipOne reached 112 km), and the K
But i dont know.. they look pretty cool to me.
The price though...
http://www.virgingalactic.com/
Edit:
The apogee of the new craft will be approximately 110 km (68 miles) and in the thermosphere, 10 km (6 miles) higher than both the SpaceShipOne target (though the last flight of the SpaceShipOne reached 112 km), and the K
Replies
This is just one of those things that was bound to happen as humanity becomes more 'futuristic.' Eventually we'll be living on the moon.
Anyway, even if you had the money, who the hell would pay that much to take a flight above the earth? Crazy people!
give it 20 years and you'll be able to maybe afford a ticket.
airlines were for the rich and famous when they first started up.
I'm still sore at Zemeckis for stating in an interview that the hover boards were real. I was a young, impressionable kid back then, and I fucking believed him. T_T
please?
The Airlines took off because it was an incredibly quick form of travel from one point to another.
If they use this as a method to get from New York to Hong Kong in under 3hrs then it will quickly revolutionize travel. But if all they do is take off from New Mexico and land at New Mexico then well... its going to be a long time before its something other than a novelty for the rich.
I think they're planning on more than just quick jabs into the thermosphere which will be the actual tipping point.
Actually you just need 3 km/s for a Geosynchronous orbit. But yeah i thought you could really fly for a bit in space..
Don't really know..
stupid shit.
I guess it will help move technology forwards a bit.
It's not like normal people have an actual need for traveling to space and back. With airlines, the situation was totally different because people were actually GOING SOMEWHERE, with various reasons to go. This is just a pointless waste of money so rich people can continue to push the 'stupid expensive fun' envelope, instead of using their wealth to help actual human beings.
yeah, Screw science, who benefits from that?
Streamlining space technology can still benefit people. Developing cheaper solutions for space technology is hardly "stupid fun" imho :]
Damn those rich people for employing a myriad of engineers and scientists as they discover new tech!
Do want.
As for the news, what about that Space hotel set out to be complete in 2012? Sounds cool to me as well, although IMO they were a bit early to conclude that their project will be done in 2012.
Some people dream about having a family. Some people dream to be alone. I dream to go to space, and if at the end of the day I end up going there, I don't really care what happens in between.
The fact that people can pay to fly up there, even for just a while, is a great offshoot, and yes it is steps in the right direction, even if it isn't a full travel solution.
Robert Goddard's early liquid fuel rockets didn't even get out of the atmosphere, but they and the private investors who backed them laid the groundwork for projects like the saturn 5.
As far as "risking your life" if you drive anywhere ever you have no place to talk.
Also don't forget the airlines didn't just show up with a DC10 one day and ready passengers.
They started as surplus bomber aircraft and transport planes with a lack of bombs or cargo to carry, but pilots who wanted to go somewhere. They started as small chartered flights from point a to point b, usually within a few hundred miles.Transcontinental commercial service didn't happen till the 1950's.
We've got a fuckton of things to fix on earth before we consider leaving.
A lot of things that made life better were born as accidents when trying to achieve some different goal.
If I recall correctly, plastic, and more precisely the generic polymer from which all sorts of plastics are made of varying density, was an accidental result when the Allies were trying to make some kind of rubber during World War 2. Plastics are used EVERYWHERE today, and neglecting the environmental effects they made a lot of products much cheaper to produce and hence made them more affordable.
"Rocket science" is not a narrow branch of science. Very much like astrophysics, it encompasses all areas of physics and science in general. As technology progresses, cheaper and more efficient methods are developed in order to achieve a goal. Say, for example, Virgin engineers end up making an ultra-light, ultra-hard, super-cheap material. It will take some time to get to consumer level, but once it does - think of the possibilities. Cheaper material means cheaper cars, meaning less fuel used, meaning less greenhouse emissions, meaning that the countries will have to spend less time sitting around in their expensive suits somewhere in Copenhagen trying to come up with a plan to reduce CO2 emmisions and failing hard. It also means less money used for you, meaning more food on the table or a Cintiq or your daughter's education.
Wow, this interesting, its almost like your saying world war 2 was okay because of the amazing technologies that came out of it.
Okay, i'll play devil's advocate, world war 2 expedited our discovery of:
-plastics
-nuclear fission
-jets
-etc
now, ask yourselves; was that worth the lives of "Over 60 million people "(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties)
And notice, i said "expedited" as in, we probably would have discovered these things anyway.
Yes, many things were invented accidentally while trying to achieve something else.
This, is true.
However, inventing these things probably would have been even faster had our efforts been pooled into that goal.
This, is also true.
---
Heres another example.
Lego: we want more money
lego tech: we could make robots
Lego: okay, we'll get more money because robots don't have pensions, life insurance, can't sue us, don't have families etc.
lego tech: but we'll also help advance robot technology which will help with surgeries, bomb recovery etc
Lego: Yeah, but that's just a side effect, we're just concerned about how much extra money we can make by cutting the middle class out of the equation almost entirely.
Lego: now i can have 4 gold plated hummers instead of 3!
"Lego: we want more money
lego tech: we could make robots
Lego: okay, we'll get more money because robots don't have pensions, life insurance, can't sue us, don't have families etc.
lego tech: but we'll also help advance robot technology which will help with surgeries, bomb recovery etc
Lego: Yeah, but that's just a side effect, we're just concerned about how much extra money we can make by cutting the middle class out of the equation almost entirely.
Lego: now i can have 4 gold plated hummers instead of 3!
"
^ Now see the thing is if your job can be done by a robot, then what does that make you?
Our whole education system is set up to produce two types of people. Brains to be the leaders and teachers of the future, and drones to do the work the mindless jobs so they can live a easy life.
Now we have robot drones that can do the mindless jobs. So where does that leave the people that were trained for those positions? The whole system is falling apart, its not just a shift of money to india and china, its a shift of money away from the lower class who were doing the work of drones.
The argument that the resources spent to make spaceship one happen could be better serving humanity are just as ludicrous as suggesting that throwing money at a problem can solve it.
But lets take that premise for a second, that our collective effort can solve anything. Well why doesn't all of polycount, all 16 thousand of us, stop doing anything art related, and pool all that time and effort and money into say, curing cancer. Guess how far we'll get. No where. Know why? Because maybe 5 of us know a damn thing about cancer as it relates to human biology and about 3 of those people actively are interested in it. Also of the 16 thousand forum members, about what percentage actually has the technical knowhow to understand human biology at the chemical/cellular level?
I've seen people's eyes glaze over at simple vector mathematics, despite the fact that it is intrinsic to the art they make and games they play/make every day.
Spaceship one, and its successor weren't the result of some government contract to make entertainment for rich people. They're the latest in a long line of aircraft designed and built by someone interested and committed to aviation, and suggesting that his expertise in that field could somehow be "better used" is like saying that you are qualified to do open heart surgery because a pen and a scalpel are similar in shape.
Moreover all inventions need a reason to be pursued. Real life doesn't come with a tech tree to follow. Its not as if nuclear power was a known idea, the words "atom" and "atomic" come from greek meaning "uncuttable" it was long thought to be a basic unit of matter that could not be reduced. So tell me how exactly you'd convince a collective of people to get behind something that the conventional wisdom of the day said was impossible?
That aside why is it that the general thought is that companies want more money just so they can have ridiculous stuff? How many gold plated hummers do you see in Bill Gate's yard?
Ever think that it takes money to make money? Every dollar you don't spend on production expenses is one more dollar you can use for a new product or even an entirely new branch of business, thus creating more of those jobs your quip is so concerned about. If it were not for mechanization a significant portion of us would have to be working on farms just to feed the rest of us. That was a money motivated move, farmers could hire fewer people and harvest more crops, more money for the farmer. Net result is you have more career options since someone a few decades ago didn't have to go harvest food, and could pursue something they were interested in instead.
who would feed them? Bit laputan isn't it?
I often dreamed of my death in space when I was younger. Maybe this is my destiny.
I'll probably be on one of these though:
(pan am space clipper in 2001)
But yes, anyone who reads Stephen Baxter will know that the future of space travel is through commercial ventures in the private sector, not governments.
(John Carmack with his team at Armadillo)
Also games do have very nice side effects as well. They help people improve their hand eye coordination, and help with training.
WWII expedited the advancement of computers...
What about the untold millions that computers have saved, the increased quality of life around the world and the power to fix what we broke on the planet?
Nuff said.
Imo anyone arguing against researching something because they cant see the benefit should be shot.
Imagine if the dude that invented the laser just stopped because he didnt know what it could be used for...
But who knows maybe it will be affordable in our lifetime.
well, once you factor in the war of the machines its still a loss overall.
War on Poverty imo. Send the homeless into space.
I don't think cardboard boxes, hold up well to space void.
Also,
[ame]
Haha, yeah, I'd rather have my ashes float as an object in space (cookie to whoever gets the reference) than be scattered on earth and end up in someone's dinner.
Off topic, but I like your subtitle.
really sad story behind that one.a guy called gerard bull wanted to create a space gun, to shoot stuff to the moon, and ended up building that thing for the iraqis, after his funding got cut off. iraq claimed it was for a space program, nobody believed them, the babylon gun parts were seized, and the israelis assassinated bull.
another option is a large variant of this:
space zeppelins!
you could combine this:
with this: