Typically rich people don’t become rich by wasting their money so I think the que for this event may be small.
I have a deep distain for all things Musk but as it stands his space program is superior to Branson’s, literally by miles.
This was more of a high altitude plane ride. I’d expect a space flight to include at least one orbit and a reentry.
+1
I gotta call BS on this line nerdery. The space station is still actually not completely out of the atmosphere. Anything less is just somebody picking a level with a difference and claiming authority. Notice how important the physics must be when they round off the level to the nearest mile or kilometer.
If we’re going to claim authority, I’ll listen to somebody who paid his own way over 50 miles and then says it didn’t feel like outer space to him. All the professor’s and other wannabe’s can sit on the ground and act as smug as they like. I’ll pay no attention. There’s always another line.
Too many socialists in this bunch. All this whining about money is appalling.
If Branson can sell his tickets and create jobs for pilots, engineers, repair men, and the like, then good on him and his wealthy passengers.
I applaud the scientific effort but the commercial hype is a bit much. NASA did this 60 years ago, although without any commercial PAX. I wonder how much of the public realize the weightlessness achieved was due to free fall and not being out of earth’s gravity.
Technically one is in continuous Free Fall, when orbiting. This causes the weightlessness, not the absence of gravity.
Absolutely correct. Except these guys weren’t in orbit. They just flew an expensive parabola.
I think people felt that Nick Chabraja did a pretty decent job with General Dynamics. He is a lawyer.
Fairly good achievement for a dyslexic high school dropout.
Someone please check my math, but at $250K for a 15 minute joy ride, it comes to $17k/minute.
I find that astounding that someone can create a ride and charge that kind of money and people are lining up. Branson always has been a great businessman. His track record continues…
Curiously, I have not heard one word of credit going to Dick Rutan and Scaled Composites.
I suppose because most people also don’t credit the builder and designer of a fun rollercoaster and talk more about the park that it’s located in. Not that Scaled doesn’t deserve credit or mention, though. It’s just not too surprising that they aren’t mentioned…
Actually, I would say the commercial hype is deserved. The technical achievements might not be much (humans have known for a while know how to do human-rated suborbital flights), but packaging it in a format that has the OK from the FAA and is reasonably affordable to do multiple times with untrained passengers is an acheivement.
Good Point:
"The American Air Force defines an astronaut as an individual who has flown over 50 miles above the mean sea level (between the thermosphere and the mesosphere). NASA used FAI’s figure (62 miles) until 2005 when they changed to 50 miles to get rid of inconsistency between civilians and military personnel flying the same spacecraft. Recent work by Gangale Thomas and Jonathan McDowell advocate for the Karman line to be shifted from 62 miles to 50 miles, citing Theodore Karman’s calculations and notes as evidence. Their findings forced the FAI to propose a meeting with the IAF to explore this issue in 2019.
Geoffrey Migiro June 6 2020 in Environment"
You put that well and it made me finally think this through. The wing loadings must be much lower than we’d typically expect. And that would follow, given the missions for both airframes. No long-haul fuel loads on the carrier. A fully expended solid fuel load on the other. And Mr Rutan has made strong but light airframes an artform.
Wow. Surprised at all the negative comments here. I am amazed at the simplicity of the design and how they were able to make it work. True, they didn’t reach orbit, but come on. How many of you have flown a rocket plane to 282,000 Ft?