3 ms·

This is one of the end uses of suborbital flights: New York to Beijing in 3 hours. The cost is high, but there are people who would pay a lot of money to make t

This is one of the end uses of suborbital flights: New York to Beijing in 3 hours. The cost is high, but there are people who would pay a lot of money to make that trip in that short a time.

jlgreco 13y ago
I wonder how the in-flight wifi would/could be. The sort of customer you are talking about is probably rather accustomed to being constantly connected.
- arjunnarayan 13y ago
  I highly doubt that 13 hours of wifi-connected travel is preferable to 3 hours offline. With a 3-hour suborbital flight you can fly out to Beijing to finalize a deal and be back in time for a late dinner. If you fly out with your lawyers and team, you could spend the 3 hours prepping, and the 3 hours back drinking the celebratory champagne.
  - ars 13y ago
    Assuming you could determine the flight schedule personally, which you probably can't.
    - the_french 13y ago
      Considering that the first ship had 6 spaces advertised, you might be able to determine the schedule by book all the spots.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Hmm, champagne. I wonder what the characteristics of such a ride would be. After the initial 2-3 minute burn I imagine they would spend most of their time in free-fall right? Maybe they could serve champagne in those "capri sun" bags: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Capri_Sun_Apple_1.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Capri_Sun_Apple_1.jpg
Gravityloss 13y ago
How would it work? The 100 km space hops are puny compared to the 11,000 km distance between Beijing and New York. ICBM:s do it by flying trajectories with multi thousand kilometer apogees, crossing radiation belts etc. It's cheaper that way than going into a shallow high speed trajectory which requires almost orbital speeds and higher energies. (Even this wasn't obvious before ICBM:s - they worked on atmospheric cruise missiles like Navajo in parallel.) So, point to point does not look very synergistic with these suborbital technologies. New York to Europe is around 6000 km, still a factor of 60. Transatlantic point to point is far closer to orbital flights really than these space hops.

This is one of the end uses of suborbital flights: New York to Beijing in 3 hours. The cost is high, but there are people who would pay a lot of money to make that trip in that short a time.

jlgreco 13y ago

I wonder how the in-flight wifi would/could be. The sort of customer you are talking about is probably rather accustomed to being constantly connected.

arjunnarayan 13y ago
I highly doubt that 13 hours of wifi-connected travel is preferable to 3 hours offline. With a 3-hour suborbital flight you can fly out to Beijing to finalize a deal and be back in time for a late dinner. If you fly out with your lawyers and team, you could spend the 3 hours prepping, and the 3 hours back drinking the celebratory champagne.
- ars 13y ago
  Assuming you could determine the flight schedule personally, which you probably can't.
  - the_french 13y ago
    Considering that the first ship had 6 spaces advertised, you might be able to determine the schedule by book all the spots.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Hmm, champagne. I wonder what the characteristics of such a ride would be. After the initial 2-3 minute burn I imagine they would spend most of their time in free-fall right? Maybe they could serve champagne in those "capri sun" bags: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Capri_Sun_Apple_1.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Capri_Sun_Apple_1.jpg

Gravityloss 13y ago

How would it work? The 100 km space hops are puny compared to the 11,000 km distance between Beijing and New York. ICBM:s do it by flying trajectories with multi thousand kilometer apogees, crossing radiation belts etc. It's cheaper that way than going into a shallow high speed trajectory which requires almost orbital speeds and higher energies. (Even this wasn't obvious before ICBM:s - they worked on atmospheric cruise missiles like Navajo in parallel.) So, point to point does not look very synergistic with these suborbital technologies. New York to Europe is around 6000 km, still a factor of 60. Transatlantic point to point is far closer to orbital flights really than these space hops.