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Is there any interest in such kind of "flight" except from some kind of fun/tourism for rich people? Will it provide something in the future, like a first step

Is there any interest in such kind of "flight" except from some kind of fun/tourism for rich people? Will it provide something in the future, like a first step to something or is it just that? It seems to me that this kind of activity has no scientific interest and no next step. Am I missing something?

mlyle 5y ago
Very little. SpaceShipOne/SpaceShipTwo/WhiteKnight* are interesting craft. Real commercial usage of a hybrid rocket engine is new. And 'LauncherOne' is slowly proving itself capable of orbital launch of small sats from a carrier aircraft, like Orbital did with Pegasus.
yarg 5y ago
Not really, Musk has won - this is just a second place dick swinging contest with Bezos.
- new_realist 5y ago
  If it’s all strictly about duck swinging, Musk has lost: he is not man enough to ride in one of his own rockets. Props to Branson and Bezos; it’s all about ego with them, but it does take some cajones to take the risk. Musk is more comfortable making hundreds of flights in his private jet, emitting prodigious amounts of CO2 when he could just use Zoom.
jasoncartwright 5y ago
Blue Origin is part of the NASA Artemis program that has the primary goal of returning humans to the moon.
- Cipater 5y ago
  1. Blue Origin's bid (and Dynetics') lost out to SpaceX. They have sued and a decision is expected by 4th August but they are not a part of the Artemis program as we speak. 2. Even if their bid had been successful, the Artemis program has nothing to do with the New Shepard project.
  - skissane 5y ago
    > but they are not a part of the Artemis program as we speak. They are almost certain to be one of the winning bidders on NextSTEP-2 Appendix N BAA [0], which is part of the Artemis Program. However, Appendix N is just providing $15 million each of funding to Blue Origin and Dynetics to keep their bids alive for the next phase of the HLS competition. NASA really wants a second HLS provider and they are going to send BO and Dynetics just enough of a trickle of funding to stop them from walking away, until such time as Congress gives NASA enough money to actually pay for one. [0] https://www.nasa.gov/nextstep/humanlander3 https://www.nasa.gov/nextstep/humanlander3
garmaine 5y ago
There is some limited scientific applications that are currently flown on sounding rockets which could be repurposed to these vehicles. But no, this is mostly about tourism and the Bezos vs. Branson dick measuring contest.
rm445 5y ago
It's probably a technology dead-end of sorts: it is unlikely to scale, either in the sense of becoming a common mode of transport, or in becoming a more fully-fledged spacecraft. Personally I think it's a beautiful system and an engineering marvel in its own right, but like a lot of super-specialised machines it's hard to say whether they affect humanity's knowledge in a wider way. It's a tourism experience, see the earth from space and try weightlessness around the quarter-million dollar mark. You could do whatever science a few minutes of weightlessness provides; astronaut training too It is worth noting that Virgin also operate a separate commercial smallsat launcher company, Virgin Orbital, which uses air-launched rockets, so maybe Virgin Galactic experience helped with that.
pmichaud 5y ago
My mind boggles when I think about this question. Here's a list of tech that we got either directly or indirectly from space related R&D: Cell phone cameras, the computer program that allowed the development of a bunch of consumer electronics like the dustbuster, memory foam, ear thermometers, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and arachidonic acid (ARA) (used in baby formula), roadway safety grooves, polycrystalline alumina (used in invisible braces, among other things), scratch-resistant lenses, the vertical "winglets" at the end of aircraft wings, cardiac pumps, portable computers, blow rubber molding (eg. from Nike Air sneakers), freeze dried fruit, foil blankets, crystal silicon solar power cells, electrolytic silver iodizers (for water purification), thermoelectric plane wing de-icing, gps without cell signal, aluminized polyester insulation, cochlear implants is in an honorable mention that someone from NASA invented after learning the principles from his time work on space shuttle electronics, wireless headphones, packaged food safety protocols, CAT scans, uv-blocking sunglasses, ski boots, better rubber tires. Doing what these companies are doing requires all kinds of novel engineering, it would be bizarre that all of it only applies exactly to space tourism and nothing else. I really don't understand all the cynicism around a private space race considering all the potential good it could do.
- dstick 5y ago
  The cynicism stems from the fact that it’s billionaires in the driver seat of this space race. It feels more like a pissing contest, than something driven by scientific curiosity. The same can be said for getting a man on the moon. But I think that it’s not USA vs USSR but Branson vs Musk vs Bezos that fuels the negativity. But your points are valid! There are good things coming out of these R&D spenditures.
  - gregoriol 5y ago
    Getting to the moon does seem to provide some interesting stuff for some future and science: being able to regularly set foot on another planet (which was already achieved a bit but has way to go, like the current/new launcher reusability vs Apollo), set a base on another planet, somehow live on another planet, ... at least there is a clear next-step with Mars after that and for science to understand how humans would live in other environments, how to provide or produce stuff there, ...
numpad0 5y ago
Winged TSTO used to be seen as the most viable path to reusability before Musk started casually toying with VTVL.
JulianMorrison 5y ago
Suborbital flight could be used for intercontinental travel. But it would probably take something on the scale of Starship, not a teeny little rocket plane.
tomxor 5y ago
> Will it provide something in the future The premise is inspiration, I think: > I want people to be able to look back at our beautiful Earth and come home and work very hard to try to do magic to it to look after it. Perhaps similar to how space-x inspires many of us here. The big difference being Virgin's actual _goal_ is inspiration... which does feel a little artificial I admit.
rasz 5y ago
Its a vomit comet on steroids. Nasa Vomit Comet: - 25 seconds 0-G at a time, dont know the number or repeats - $5K per person or $160K for the whole plane https://www.gozerog.com https://www.gozerog.com: - 15x ~30 seconds - ~$7K per person Bezos flight: - four minutes in zero gravity - $28 million per person? Branson: - no idea, probably even shorter - $250K?
- gregoriol 5y ago
  0G flights also exist in Europe: https://www.airzerog.com/ https://www.airzerog.com/ about 6k€ per person and it has a huge space available inside to float around and do stuff, it's an A310!

mlyle 5y ago

Very little. SpaceShipOne/SpaceShipTwo/WhiteKnight* are interesting craft. Real commercial usage of a hybrid rocket engine is new. And 'LauncherOne' is slowly proving itself capable of orbital launch of small sats from a carrier aircraft, like Orbital did with Pegasus.

yarg 5y ago

Not really, Musk has won - this is just a second place dick swinging contest with Bezos.

new_realist 5y ago
If it’s all strictly about duck swinging, Musk has lost: he is not man enough to ride in one of his own rockets. Props to Branson and Bezos; it’s all about ego with them, but it does take some cajones to take the risk. Musk is more comfortable making hundreds of flights in his private jet, emitting prodigious amounts of CO2 when he could just use Zoom.

jasoncartwright 5y ago

Blue Origin is part of the NASA Artemis program that has the primary goal of returning humans to the moon.

Cipater 5y ago
1. Blue Origin's bid (and Dynetics') lost out to SpaceX. They have sued and a decision is expected by 4th August but they are not a part of the Artemis program as we speak. 2. Even if their bid had been successful, the Artemis program has nothing to do with the New Shepard project.
- skissane 5y ago
  > but they are not a part of the Artemis program as we speak. They are almost certain to be one of the winning bidders on NextSTEP-2 Appendix N BAA [0], which is part of the Artemis Program. However, Appendix N is just providing $15 million each of funding to Blue Origin and Dynetics to keep their bids alive for the next phase of the HLS competition. NASA really wants a second HLS provider and they are going to send BO and Dynetics just enough of a trickle of funding to stop them from walking away, until such time as Congress gives NASA enough money to actually pay for one. [0] https://www.nasa.gov/nextstep/humanlander3 https://www.nasa.gov/nextstep/humanlander3

garmaine 5y ago

There is some limited scientific applications that are currently flown on sounding rockets which could be repurposed to these vehicles. But no, this is mostly about tourism and the Bezos vs. Branson dick measuring contest.

rm445 5y ago

It's probably a technology dead-end of sorts: it is unlikely to scale, either in the sense of becoming a common mode of transport, or in becoming a more fully-fledged spacecraft. Personally I think it's a beautiful system and an engineering marvel in its own right, but like a lot of super-specialised machines it's hard to say whether they affect humanity's knowledge in a wider way. It's a tourism experience, see the earth from space and try weightlessness around the quarter-million dollar mark. You could do whatever science a few minutes of weightlessness provides; astronaut training too It is worth noting that Virgin also operate a separate commercial smallsat launcher company, Virgin Orbital, which uses air-launched rockets, so maybe Virgin Galactic experience helped with that.

pmichaud 5y ago

My mind boggles when I think about this question. Here's a list of tech that we got either directly or indirectly from space related R&D: Cell phone cameras, the computer program that allowed the development of a bunch of consumer electronics like the dustbuster, memory foam, ear thermometers, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and arachidonic acid (ARA) (used in baby formula), roadway safety grooves, polycrystalline alumina (used in invisible braces, among other things), scratch-resistant lenses, the vertical "winglets" at the end of aircraft wings, cardiac pumps, portable computers, blow rubber molding (eg. from Nike Air sneakers), freeze dried fruit, foil blankets, crystal silicon solar power cells, electrolytic silver iodizers (for water purification), thermoelectric plane wing de-icing, gps without cell signal, aluminized polyester insulation, cochlear implants is in an honorable mention that someone from NASA invented after learning the principles from his time work on space shuttle electronics, wireless headphones, packaged food safety protocols, CAT scans, uv-blocking sunglasses, ski boots, better rubber tires. Doing what these companies are doing requires all kinds of novel engineering, it would be bizarre that all of it only applies exactly to space tourism and nothing else. I really don't understand all the cynicism around a private space race considering all the potential good it could do.

dstick 5y ago
The cynicism stems from the fact that it’s billionaires in the driver seat of this space race. It feels more like a pissing contest, than something driven by scientific curiosity. The same can be said for getting a man on the moon. But I think that it’s not USA vs USSR but Branson vs Musk vs Bezos that fuels the negativity. But your points are valid! There are good things coming out of these R&D spenditures.
- gregoriol 5y ago
  Getting to the moon does seem to provide some interesting stuff for some future and science: being able to regularly set foot on another planet (which was already achieved a bit but has way to go, like the current/new launcher reusability vs Apollo), set a base on another planet, somehow live on another planet, ... at least there is a clear next-step with Mars after that and for science to understand how humans would live in other environments, how to provide or produce stuff there, ...

numpad0 5y ago

Winged TSTO used to be seen as the most viable path to reusability before Musk started casually toying with VTVL.

JulianMorrison 5y ago

Suborbital flight could be used for intercontinental travel. But it would probably take something on the scale of Starship, not a teeny little rocket plane.

tomxor 5y ago

> Will it provide something in the future The premise is inspiration, I think: > I want people to be able to look back at our beautiful Earth and come home and work very hard to try to do magic to it to look after it. Perhaps similar to how space-x inspires many of us here. The big difference being Virgin's actual _goal_ is inspiration... which does feel a little artificial I admit.

rasz 5y ago

Its a vomit comet on steroids. Nasa Vomit Comet: - 25 seconds 0-G at a time, dont know the number or repeats - $5K per person or $160K for the whole plane https://www.gozerog.com https://www.gozerog.com: - 15x ~30 seconds - ~$7K per person Bezos flight: - four minutes in zero gravity - $28 million per person? Branson: - no idea, probably even shorter - $250K?

gregoriol 5y ago
0G flights also exist in Europe: https://www.airzerog.com/ https://www.airzerog.com/ about 6k€ per person and it has a huge space available inside to float around and do stuff, it's an A310!