Rocketing into the record books

[Nightstalkers]

A US aviation pioneer is celebrating after his spaceship became the first privately owned rocket to fly to the edge of space and back.
SpaceShipOne, built by Burt Rutan, went over space's 62 mile boundary, reports the BBC.
Mr Rutan was on the runway to embrace pilot Mike Melvill on his return.
"It was a mind-blowing experience, it really was. Absolutely an awesome thing," said Mr Melvill.
"Burt thought of everything to make it work and it all worked exactly as he told us."
Mr Melvill said the view from space was "spectacular", and he was only sad that Mr Rutan, who he described as his "best friend in the whole world", could not have been there, too.
A delighted Mr Rutan said it had been an emotional journey.
"The way you guys felt when you saw it touch down, we felt that several times in mission control during the flight," he said.
Steve Bennett, chief of the British civilian space project, Starchaser Industries, said it was a "marvellous achievement", but that he was slightly envious.
"This just proves that you don't have to be Nasa or a government organisation," he said.

 

[Spiderman]

Pretty awesome. I was reading about it in the paper and the people involved are optimistically hoping to get suborbital hotels up by 2025 (or at least open up "space flight" as a commercial venture).

 

[Nightstalkers]

Originally posted by Spiderman
Pretty awesome. I was reading about it in the paper and the people involved are optimistically hoping to get suborbital hotels up by 2025 (or at least open up "space flight" as a commercial venture).

Well, they have those underwater motels down in Florida so why not orbital motels?

The one problem would be optimizing a system of delivery. Rocket fuel is far too expensive for everyday flight to orbit and all that.

 

[Spiderman]

Presumably they're working on that. My article says it ran on a "mixture of solid- and liquid-fueled propellants", whatever that might be.

 

[Oversoul]

And they would certainly have customers if they pulled it off...

Even if it were ridiculously expensive...

 

[mythosx]

I dont think the fuel is the biggest problem. We have so much space junk up there and the fact that you want to build a hotel and then shuttle customers up into there constantly is just silly. Unless some one can convince nasa to clean up its garbage.

 

[Nightstalkers]

Originally posted by mythosx
I dont think the fuel is the biggest problem. We have so much space junk up there and the fact that you want to build a hotel and then shuttle customers up into there constantly is just silly. Unless some one can convince nasa to clean up its garbage.

All the unused stuff, we dump into one shuttle and recycle it.


Its the perfect job for Greenpeace :XD

 

[Ransac]

Originally posted by Nightstalkers
"This just proves that you don't have to be Nasa or a government organisation," he said. [/B]

It doesn't prove a thing. He could be a robot, or even a canadian, created by the government to get our hopes up with false pretenses of accomplishment!!!!!!!!





Oh, and vote Ransac/Monkey in 2004.



Ransac, cpa trash man

 

[Spiderman]

Originally posted by mythosx
I dont think the fuel is the biggest problem. We have so much space junk up there and the fact that you want to build a hotel and then shuttle customers up into there constantly is just silly. Unless some one can convince nasa to clean up its garbage.

What does space junk have to do with it? The possibility of collisions? It depends how far the "hotel" is going to be up.

And people will definitely pay for the experience - look at all the other crazy stuff people do.

 

[Nightstalkers]

Why not use a targetting magnetic field to lift and pull objects to and from the planet? If you could shield electronics enough you could do it... Eliminate the need for rocketfuel to get you into space in the first place...


Or just build a huge lift to put things into orbit.

 

[train]

I think the structure would be in danger most... Most small meteorites burn up while entering our atmosphere, and end up as almost nothing... Putting this hotel outside this protection leaves it open to getting hit by full speed, full sized meteors...

Chances of this happening - no idea, but I know it may be 1-3% of the time...

Either way - a defense system would have to be put into place that could shoot them down before hand...

and such begins the private defense systems in outer space...

pretty soon some hotel will be called "Sith"...

 

[Spiderman]

I don't think it's that big of a problem. I don't hear the Russian space station Mir being overly plagued by getting hit by meteors.

 

[train]

it's the "overly plagued" remark that verifies my 1-3% of the time...

It's just going to be an issue that has to be addressed... That and eventually - we'll need space traffic controllers...

 

[Spiderman]

I just said that to CMA because I don't know the true numbers. I suspect that it's a non-issue though.

 

[train]

gotcha...

Amazing to see all the engineers/architects scrambling for some sort of space hotel design that will be built...

Someone already said there's a competition for it...