Space tourism to entail development of near-Earth hotels and space limousi

[lovuian]

http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/379/15302_spacetour.html

Space tourism to entail development of near-Earth hotels and space limousines
04/16/2005 17:30
A ticket to space will cost about $208,000, which is rather cheap in comparison with the journey to the ISS

Space tourists Denis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth, who made their trips to the International Space Station in 2001 and 2002 on board Russian Soyuz spaceships, as well as three successful sub-orbital voyages of the US first-ever tourist spacecraft SpaceShipOne (SS1) in September-October of 2004 triggered the development of the industry of space tourism. The dream has become real for multi-millionaires so far. However, the opportunities of the SS1 craft with its abilities to fly at the height of almost 100 kilometers and short-term weightlessness during the craft's return to Earth, can be affordable for middle classes too.

When the SS1 finished its first successful space voyage, specialists decided to amend the spacecraft, in order to make it roomier and more comfortable. American and British billionaires organized the new consortium to pursue this goal - Virgin Galactic Airways. To start the exploitation of five sub-orbital tourist spacecrafts in 2007-2008 is the prime goal of the new organization. Each of the five crafts will be capable of carrying five passengers. A space flight is expected to last for 2.5 hours: passengers will experience three or four minutes of weightlessness, when the spaceships start descending from the upper point of the trajectory. A ticket to space will cost about $208,000, which is relatively cheap in comparison with the price of the journey to the ISS - $15 million.

Virgin Galactic plans to organize space tours for 3,000 people in five years. It is noteworthy that the company has already received reservation requests from 18,000 potential space tourists.

The interest in passenger flights beyond the limits of the Earth's atmosphere made the US administration issue the new law, which stipulated amendments to the act of commercial space launches. Would-be space travelers will have to undergo medical examinations before they take their seats in the spacecraft. In addition, people will have to sign a paper, which will document their agreement to claim the risk that can be connected with such a daring journey. Furthermore, organizations, which deal with the exploitation of tourist spacecrafts, will have to inform their clients of the machines' technical reliability and conduct training sessions of flight security measures with them too. Pilots of passenger spacecrafts will have to be licensed accordingly. Some American officials believe that the US government's preoccupation with space travelers' security may bring the whole commercial space industry to a standstill. Experts say that private space flights should be treated as adventures, not transportations

more...
2001 Space Odyssey is coming to reality!!!

[TahitiNut]

1. NEO Hotels for neo-cons?

:silly:

[daleo]

2. 208K per person, five people is $1 million per flight.

I suppose it could be trendy for a while among the fairly rich. Based on historical experience, about 1 flight in 50 (maybe more) will blow up, crash, disintegrate, etc. That may put a damper in business.

The seriously rich will no doubt want to have orgies in space. I wonder if Hugh Hefner will survive long enough to indulge?

[MisterP]

3. Vermicious Knids in the Space Hotel!

[shadowknows69]

4. this is what the ISS has been working on this whole time isn't it

the viability of the first Space Ramada Inn and inevitable bad lounge singer doing a bad cover of "Space Oddity" or "Space Cowboy"

[ldf]

12. strangely, i would trust ramada inn

more than i trust the current controllers of space.

space development should be for entertainment purposes, vacations, getaways (not excluding real science labs). the byproducts that would come from that development would probably be a lot more "people friendly" that what comes from the military establishment.

yes, i would love to vacation in a 2001 type spoked space station.

you could experience everything from full gravity, to zero.

as a side development, what about retirement communities?

older people would be able to navigate a lot easier at less gravity, less chance of bone breakage, longer lives before requiring assistance. it should be easier to deal with the usual difficulties that arise from old age. (yes, i know that lack of, or lower gravity, could cause problems, but the benefits could outweigh them.)

why not? all those rich snowbirds going to a retirement community in the sky (instead of florida or arizona, freeing up space for the unfortunate earthbound...), PLUS the view from the window would be truly magnificent.

i'm not too far from that point in my life and i think it would be an incredible way to wrap up the experience (not to mention already much closer to GAWD).

you young whippersnappers need to get hopping and make this a reality. besides there's gold in them THERE hills. you could get rich in the process. we baby boomers are going to want it all. but please make it reasonably affordable. m'kay?

next stop, the lunar hilton!

:-)

[lovuian]

5. Will we need a passport???

What will the Aliens say when we invade space!!!

[rfkrfk]

6. this is rubbish n/t

[catnhatnh]

9. The real rubbish in this post...

....is that a $208,000 discretionary purchase is within reach of the tattered remains of the American middle class.What a joke...

[shadowknows69]

15. shouldn't those of us

that have been paying into NASA for umpteen years get a serious discount on rooms? If it wasnt for my parent's, grandparents and my taxes there wouldn't be any marriots on the moon.

[truthisfreedom]

7. let them blow their money on space travel. that's one less contribution

dollar for the thugs for every dollar they spend on playing buck rogers.

[DeaconBlues]

8. Whatever it takes to get people involved in space exploration again

I'd rather see NASA go through a period of reform and receive real funding so the U.S. government can lead the way in exploration again, instead of the sorry state we have now, where we have to hitch rides on Russian rockets. But if this is not going to happen, I hope the private sector can take up the slack. Its where our future is.

[PaulaFarrell]

10. what will these spacecraft use for fuel?

This will be happening the same time that we are supposed to be hitting Peak Oil. But I guess there will always be people rich enough to use up more than their share of energy...not to mention CO2 output

x(

[librechik]

11. I could get real excited about this--

except for global starvation and diseases. It seems to me we have a few greater priorities herre on earth before we seek our future in space.

But whatever. Like that will stop it. It's a commercial venture. There's no profit in feeding the starving and preventing disease in the poor.

[The Traveler]

13. We cannot continue to support the Earth's billions

on the limited resources of a single planet. So our choices ultimately are to achieve a sudden drop in population (ugh), achieve a denial of resources to a large segment of that population (ugh again), massively expand nuclear power systems (quesy feeling) or expand into the solar system. Pick one. Given the accelerating pace of global warming and species extinction rates, we had better get busy, or the choice will be made for us.

[librechik]

17. get real--expanding into the solar system is not an option

except in 70s era fantasy fiction. There are not enough resources on earth to make it happen. Blow a million an hour at a zero-grav casino? Save it for after we invent Star Trek Replicator technology.

We might be able to save the biome here if we work fast and hard. But not if we blow all our cash and resources on elitist dreams to be achieved by the very richest few only.

We need to clean up the earthship before we expand the fleet.

[The Traveler]

18. A fairly conventional reaction/argument

Common wisdom is sometimes poorly founded when discussing novel situations or the development of new technologies. But this line of discussion leads us into a lenthly technical debate, which is not really the purpose of this place. If you wish, we can pursue that debate through other means. Let me lead you into the thicket a bit ...

"We need to clean up the earthship before we expand the fleet." A commendable sentiment, but quite possibly impossible to achieve. Expansion of the fleet may in fact be the pre-requisite to the clean up. Orbital casinos are, of course, not the answer ... but orbital solar power satellites may well be part of the solution. (Lot of good work has been done on that concept ... but in my view insufficient attention has been paid to the possible effects of the low density microwave power transmission beams proposed.)

What makes all this discussion so interesting to me is that, of course, we have never been in a situation like this before. We have operated a high energy technology for only about 150 years ... how can we possibly predict with any accuracy how this is going to turn out? It may well be it is not practical to exploit the resources of the solar system ... and it may well be impossible to sustain high energy civilization on a planetary surface without that exploitation. In that event, high energy technology civilization may be a relatively short term phase in the history of an intelligent species.

One thing is clear, a massive re-engineering of our power production and manufacturing processes must needs be achieved, and with some haste. Barring a breakthrough discovery in physics, I see few promising alternatives. A practical hydrogen fuel economy, for example, will require massive production of additional electrical power. Burning fossil fuels to make hydrogen to produce low emission fuel seems counter productive. I regard nuclear power with grave suspicion. Solar power applied on a massive scale would seem to be the answer, but the atmosphere (blessedly) insulates us rather well from the power output of the sun. Therein lies the economy of scale potentially achievable with the solar power satellite approach. Available power density. It's a nice theory, anyway ... no guarantees it will work out practically and with the near zero environmental impact its advocates advertise.

By the way, if you want to intelligently bring science fiction into this kind of discussion, one's arguments would be better served by referring to the works of Arthur Clark or Larry Niven than the fantasies of Gene Roddenberry.

[librechik]

20. I am 100% in favor of robotic interplanetary space travel

and would vote for that in a referendum. We should have more of that and better pictures!

The satellite power technology sounds exciting, though I shudder at the "dual purpose" such satellites might ultimately serve in today's militarized technocracy.

And you're right about Clark--I'm rooting for the earth-to-space elevator made with fullerine!

But why don't we wait til we solve the problem of radiation exposure on the human body for long periods outside the atmosphere before we send humans to planets? Some brush that issue aside, but it hasn't been solved yet, and until it is any years-long travel in interplanetary space is a suicide mission, if somewhat delayed. Instruments and robots can do as good a job as humans, if not better, for the purpose of expanding space science.

Perhaps there is a galactic diaspora in our future (or past?) but not in the next few decades, surely.

[Ratty]

14. Where's my flying car?

And my robot maid? And while we're at it I've been waiting for my self cleaning kitchen of the future today and those complete turkey dinners--with all the trimmings--in a pill (just add water).

[shadowknows69]

16. quit griping

you can have a cell phone the size of a thumbtaxk what more do you want? Renewable energy sources and universal health care? fuking pinko commie ;)

[PartyPooper]

19. If I sell my house before the bubble bursts

maybe I could afford a one-way trip into outer space. Golly gee whiz.

And, then what's next?

:D

:hi:

[Bridget Burke]

21. But they can't be bothered to keep the Hubble running.

Odd priorities.

Visit Offworld--watch out for Replicants....

[LiberallyInclined]

22. what's the liability insurance on those kind of things gonna cost?

the shuttle program hasn't exactly been the safest segment of commercial aviation.

[Vogon_Glory]

23. Republicans Versus Sea of Glory

I strongly believe in a human presence in space and one of the many bitter things I'd been forced to swallow by the Banana Republican-controlled Congress since 1995 has been the continuing decline of NASA's manned space program. Say what you will about the fiscal prudence and possible energy wastage of a manned space program, but what I liked about a manned space program was that it was more positive and life-affirming than the militarism, oil-patch Caesarism and small-mindedness endemic in our occupied capital today.

I strongly believe that great republics ought to be doing great things. It's something great peoples do, and I believe that we Americans yet retain the potential to be great again within us. In the 1840's, a badly-divided, backwards, slave-owning America was willing to spend a huge portion of the US federal budget for a multi-year scientific expedition around the planet. Today Buckaroo Bush and his fellow Banana Republicans happily chop scientific research and scientific educational funding while fatuously claiming that their (backwards, irrational, and short-sighted) policies are bettering America as a whole.

[Kerrytravelers]

24. Hey- this is a great idea.

Let the filty rich rethugs take off to the moon. We promise, no Dems will go up there after them. Once we get * and co. up there, we'll leave 'em there- a one way ticket. Then, the Earth will be nice again and the rest of the globe will forgive us for sticking * on them.