SpaceShipTwo

[MK-84]

To SpaceShipTwo and the two crew members onboard. 

We mourn with you for your your lost and for your injured, in the pursuit of your and our dreams becoming reality.



Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, 1994.

[CAP1]

i saw this. it is a crying shame, both for the families of those lost and injured, and for the program itself.

 

[GScholz]

Has been a bad week for the space industry...

[bozon]

It is space - the final frontier. People will die trying to conquer it like they died trying to reach the poles, the highest peaks and the bottom of the oceans. And still there will be thousands of volunteers for these missions.

Risk is part of the space business and once we start placing "safety above all" we will reach no where. Not that long ago, when the US had balls and can-do spirit, they went from zero to the moon in 10 years. These days they cannot even bring a man to a low orbit space station. At least this Branson guy has the balls and the spirit. The world need more men like that and they need more support from the world. I hope the recent accidents are nothing more than a minor setback.

[NatCigg]

what is scaryer?

A. Riding a rocket?

B. Flying up to 60 miles altitude?

C. Gliding from 60 miles altitude?

Umm, Im going to go with A. Riding a rocket. 

[cpxxx]

Agreed bozon but I think the biggest single restriction on all space travel is cost. It's cost not technology enthusiasm that is restricting space exploration. When even the United States no longer has a viable vehicle to carry humans into space, that tells you something. The days of the Apollo space program when you could dump billions of tax dollars into a single prestige project are long gone.

There's no money to be made in human space travel as Richard Branson is finding out the hard way. 

[bozon]

I disagree about the money cpxx. This business is high risk high reward - and high investment I may add. Private corporations are driven by profits, but hate risks. As long as they can make their profit elsewhere, why take a risk on a very long term project? You need visionaries for such a task, not brokers and analysts.

The first company to be in space will dominate the field in the years to come. This is how these things work and Brandon knows a few things about making profits (and also the risks in losing). But as the moto of the SAS goes: who dares wins.

One reason for the high costs are the extreme safety and regulation requirements - they take a lot of time and money and in the end the spacecrafts still explode. One person killed and one badly injured is bad, but how many died a meaningless death in car accidents, or street crime that day?

[flight17]

Only the co-pilot perished. The pilot was able to eject and is now recovering in the hospital.

[Bodhi]

There's no money to be made in human space travel as Richard Branson is finding out the hard way. 

Pretty myopic view....

[cpxxx]

Pretty myopic view....

Quite the opposite. I didn't say there's no money to be made in space. But when it comes to flying untrained passengers. Where's the market? Sure there's always a few adventurous celebrities and billionaire businessmen willing to pay the silly money for it. But what happens next time a ship disintegrates with some of the richest people in the world on board? The market evaporates that's what.

Look at the cost of putting an astronaut on the ISS. It costs $70m alone for NASA to get a seat on Soyuz just to get to the station. That's a bargain basement price compared to what would be paid to a commercial operator for a seat on one of their new shuttles or rockets and if you're not the operator who gets the NASA contract where's your business?

It's all very well talking about visionaries and evoking the adventurers of old like Columbus or the pioneers on the western frontier. Just remember Columbus found the Americas with wooden sailing ships and the pioneers used horses and wagons. Not quite a valid comparison when it comes to space exploration.

Don't get me wrong I'm all for space exploration. I sat up all night to watch Armstrong set foot on the moon back in '69 and am as fascinated as anyone else but over forty years later no one has gone back. Mainly because no one is willing to pay for it.

Far too many people are starry eyed about the business. Too many trekkies who don't seem to understand the difference between fiction and reality.

So call me myopic if you like but I think I see things more clearly now than I ever did before. The nine year old me who watched the moon landings expected would have expected me to by typing this from my vacation home on Mars. He is disappointed.

[GScholz]

As long as we have to use chemical rockets space will always be prohibitively expensive; building great cathedrals of steel and fuel and lighting them on fire will never be cheap. However, truck-sized fusion reactors could become a reality in 10-20 years time and combined with great advances in materials we could be on the verge of an energy revolution.

[Someguy63]

An energy revolution would be very useful to have happen.

It would be useful like now.

[Meatwad]

An energy revolution wont happen anytime soon. If somebody makes a breakthrough, chances are somebody will make them sleep with the fishes

[GScholz]

So you think the oil industry will take on Lockheed Martin Skunk Works and make them "sleep with the fishes"... I think it is far more likely that you're just a bit paranoid.

http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details

[Someguy63]

An energy revolution wont happen anytime soon. If somebody makes a breakthrough, chances are somebody will make them sleep with the fishes

An energy revolution could begin in the next 20 years. As for a random estimate eighty at the MOST.