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> "..., there’s got to be a future in suborbital space,” Bennis said. “I want it to come in my lifetime.” But, why? What possible benefit is there from a subor

> "..., there’s got to be a future in suborbital space,” Bennis said. “I want it to come in my lifetime.” But, why? What possible benefit is there from a suborbital vomit ride? They're probably not even high enough to get the overview effect. This is going to be the day of downvotes for me, but I can't see what good comes from strapping people in to a vehicle that gets less than 3% of the energy needed to get to orbit for a ticket price of $100k. None of the technical problems you'd have to solve would advance real spaceflight. It cannot be the space frontier dream of humankind to lob themselves briefly to 8 times the altitude of an airliner and then flop back down. I'd have been embarrassed to have gone on that trip for that price, to the point that I'd have turned down a free ticket for fear of having given the impression that I'd paid.

jpatokal 8y ago
This was my reaction as well. What exactly do you get for the $95,000 price premium and the massive amount of added risk? Not even bragging rights, since even the most generous definition of "space" is 50 mi, not the 37 mi Xcor planned.
dehrmann 8y ago
It's like paying for a European vacation and getting bused to DC and shown all the European embassies.
CydeWeys 8y ago
And yet they found over 200 people willing to pony up the money to do it. I agree with you in that I personally don't think it's worth it, but evidently others do. Hell, people spend hundreds of millions of dollars on artwork -- I'd be much more inclined to do a $100k suborbital flight over that, and it's a drop in the bucket to those people too.
- riantogo 8y ago
  Artwork is not a good comparison here because those are tangible investments which appreciates in value. There is a market for art. If you bought one for a million you are going to likely sell for more than that.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    Insert other outrageously expensive good or service that is non-appreciating, then. Like yachts.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Not all [marketable] art appreciates, not all [marketable] art has permanence.
- lozenge 8y ago
  That number could be inflated for social proof.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    That applies equally to all forms of luxury spending (like space flights), no? Those $50k purses aren't "worth" that much either; it's overpaying for social proof.
ummonk 8y ago
Yeah, balloon rides to the edge of space seem way cooler to me. Granted, you don't briefly experience zero-g, but the sensation of zero g doesn't seem very appealing anyway...
chihuahua 8y ago
I agree 100%. I wonder if some people think there is an invisible boundary to "space" and when you're past it, gravity ceases to exist and you're just minutes away from bumping into Vulcans and Klingons. Reaching an altitude of 60 km is just barely leaving the surface of Earth. Not at all impressive and totally not worth the time and hassle, never mind paying $100,000.
computerex 8y ago
Right? I'd sooner spend the ~$5k with Zero G to experience microgravity.
uranium 8y ago
"None of the technical problems you'd have to solve would advance real spaceflight." That's just not true. Spaceflight is hard. There are many, many technical problems to solve. Just because you're not going to orbit, doesn't mean that you're not advancing the state of the art. I'm a former XCOR investor. I supported them not for their suborbital program, but for their orbital vision [see e.g. https://spacenews.com/34930xcor-aerospace-makes-plans-for-reusable-orbital-vehicle/ https://spacenews.com/34930xcor-aerospace-makes-plans-for-re...]. The Lynx was a stepping-stone, a way of both funding their larger ambition and testing small parts of the larger system. The idea was to build to space as incrementally as possible, so as to be able to avoid the huge "and then we need $100M, and then it works or it doesn't" step that most space business plans have. Remember that the founding team had just come out of the crater of Rotary Rocket, which had one of those plans. Jeff Greason once said that if he could find a way to fly half a customer to space, he'd do it. Unfortunately, there were still some lumps in the capital needs, the jump from engines to the Lynx was larger than expected, the Lynx took longer than expected, and the funding wasn't there. If they'd had another $20M, it could have been amazing, but that's a common refrain. XCOR's plan was basically the opposite of SpaceX: rather than going orbital and then building in reusability, they started with total reusability and then wanted to bootstrap to orbit. Their goal was full airplane-style reuse, where you land, inspect, fuel, and go, and fly the same craft again in a matter or hours or minutes. They'd already demonstrated that kind of turnaround with their rocket-powered airplanes; I believe I saw a video of a sub-15-minute turnaround on the EZ Rocket. They'd also made engines that could withstand hundreds if not thousands of firings, and pumps that lacked the catastrophic failure modes and tiny tolerances of turbopumps. Yes, I lost all the money. But it was worth a shot.

jpatokal 8y ago

This was my reaction as well. What exactly do you get for the $95,000 price premium and the massive amount of added risk? Not even bragging rights, since even the most generous definition of "space" is 50 mi, not the 37 mi Xcor planned.

dehrmann 8y ago

It's like paying for a European vacation and getting bused to DC and shown all the European embassies.

CydeWeys 8y ago

And yet they found over 200 people willing to pony up the money to do it. I agree with you in that I personally don't think it's worth it, but evidently others do. Hell, people spend hundreds of millions of dollars on artwork -- I'd be much more inclined to do a $100k suborbital flight over that, and it's a drop in the bucket to those people too.

riantogo 8y ago
Artwork is not a good comparison here because those are tangible investments which appreciates in value. There is a market for art. If you bought one for a million you are going to likely sell for more than that.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  Insert other outrageously expensive good or service that is non-appreciating, then. Like yachts.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  Not all [marketable] art appreciates, not all [marketable] art has permanence.
lozenge 8y ago
That number could be inflated for social proof.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  That applies equally to all forms of luxury spending (like space flights), no? Those $50k purses aren't "worth" that much either; it's overpaying for social proof.

ummonk 8y ago

Yeah, balloon rides to the edge of space seem way cooler to me. Granted, you don't briefly experience zero-g, but the sensation of zero g doesn't seem very appealing anyway...

chihuahua 8y ago

I agree 100%. I wonder if some people think there is an invisible boundary to "space" and when you're past it, gravity ceases to exist and you're just minutes away from bumping into Vulcans and Klingons. Reaching an altitude of 60 km is just barely leaving the surface of Earth. Not at all impressive and totally not worth the time and hassle, never mind paying $100,000.

computerex 8y ago

Right? I'd sooner spend the ~$5k with Zero G to experience microgravity.

uranium 8y ago

"None of the technical problems you'd have to solve would advance real spaceflight." That's just not true. Spaceflight is hard. There are many, many technical problems to solve. Just because you're not going to orbit, doesn't mean that you're not advancing the state of the art. I'm a former XCOR investor. I supported them not for their suborbital program, but for their orbital vision [see e.g. https://spacenews.com/34930xcor-aerospace-makes-plans-for-reusable-orbital-vehicle/ https://spacenews.com/34930xcor-aerospace-makes-plans-for-re...]. The Lynx was a stepping-stone, a way of both funding their larger ambition and testing small parts of the larger system. The idea was to build to space as incrementally as possible, so as to be able to avoid the huge "and then we need $100M, and then it works or it doesn't" step that most space business plans have. Remember that the founding team had just come out of the crater of Rotary Rocket, which had one of those plans. Jeff Greason once said that if he could find a way to fly half a customer to space, he'd do it. Unfortunately, there were still some lumps in the capital needs, the jump from engines to the Lynx was larger than expected, the Lynx took longer than expected, and the funding wasn't there. If they'd had another $20M, it could have been amazing, but that's a common refrain. XCOR's plan was basically the opposite of SpaceX: rather than going orbital and then building in reusability, they started with total reusability and then wanted to bootstrap to orbit. Their goal was full airplane-style reuse, where you land, inspect, fuel, and go, and fly the same craft again in a matter or hours or minutes. They'd already demonstrated that kind of turnaround with their rocket-powered airplanes; I believe I saw a video of a sub-15-minute turnaround on the EZ Rocket. They'd also made engines that could withstand hundreds if not thousands of firings, and pumps that lacked the catastrophic failure modes and tiny tolerances of turbopumps. Yes, I lost all the money. But it was worth a shot.