Private trip to space?

welsh

welsh

Junkmaster
Check this out- imagine a day when you can buy your own space craft-

http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_1957960.html

A Brief, Private Trip into Space
The Competition to Become First Commercial Manned Flight

Morning Edition audio


SpaceShipOne, one of the X Prize entrants, lands during a test flight.

A Canadian entry, the da Vinci Project's spacecraft would be launched from a large helium balloon.

June 15, 2004 -- A small company funded by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen will attempt to send a person into space aboard a vehicle called SpaceShipOne. It's one of more than 20 groups competing for a $10 million prize for the first non-governmental manned space flight. NPR's David Kestenbaum reports.

The rules for the X Prize are simple: Send a privately funded vehicle with three people aboard up 62.5 miles, return them safely to Earth, then repeat the feat with the same ship within two weeks. The reward, aimed at jump-starting a space tourism industry, expires at the end of this year.

Next Monday, Scaled Composites, a small company in the California desert will attempt to send SpaceShipOne into suborbital space. "If all goes as planned, SpaceShipOne will just poke its nose into space; then gravity will quickly pull it back to Earth," Kestenbaum reports.

SpaceShipOne is the brainchild of aeronautics entrepreneur Burt Rutan, whose Voyager aircraft in 1986 completed the first flight around the world without refueling.

A rocket plane about the size of an oversized car, SpaceShipOne begins flight strapped to the belly of another airplane, then disconnects, fires a rocket engine and heads up. In May, the vehicle reached an altitude of 40 miles. Monday's goal will be 60 miles.
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I think that this is quite old... mean that an un-govermental spaceship has already BEEN in space. But I'm not completely sure.
 
I'm quite sure it's gonna work out.. I really hope so... I mean i realy would like to see space once in my live...
Well we'll see soon enough
 
There have been many, many non-governmental flights into space. But they were all done by major corporations just putting satellites into orbit. What they meant was to make a flight into space that could eventually pave the way for commercial flights around space just as we take airplanes today.... And don't we all really want to see space.
 
I don't get it - a $10 million prise? Surely, building out an effective space travel company must cost way more money than that?
 
Well when competition comes, progress follows. Next generation space vehicles will probably gonna be much more efficient than what NASA has.
Personally I'd invest in space garbage cleaners. The ones that nuke the debris with giant lasers or whatever. There's gonna be a lot of demand in that soon.
 
Yeah, there will be I think. I read some article somewhere that we are a few decades away from not being able to leave the atmosphere due to all the garbage we are dumping into space. We;d be grounded for about 200 years. or so they say...


B
 
What do you get when your three passengers end up dead? I agree that a $10 million prize is way too little for what they are trying to do. Amateur rocketeers spend upwards of $20,000 on a single rocket that could probably carry one rat. To date, I don't think that any of them have gotten a rocket into space.
 
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