Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

I really appreciate Blue Origin's methodical approach to building this system. I note that they are closer to being operational than Virgin Galactic who I consider their primary competitor.

The challenge I have with the 'suborbital tourist' economy is that while some folks will pay $200K per ride for less than 3 minutes of zero gravity, one has to compare that to the Zero Gravity Corp which gives you over 6 minutes of weightlessness (in 20 - 30 second increments) for $5K[1]

Sure there is the 'Concorde' effect where the very wealthy will all do it once so that they won't feel left out at cocktail parties but that does not seem sustainable.

My hope is that Blue Origin's plans to move into orbital flights is successful. Spending $200K to spend nearly 90 minutes (1 orbit) weightless has much more appeal.

[1] https://www.gozerog.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=reservations.we...

View on HN

I don't think the aim is for New Shepard to be a sustainable business, you only need maybe a dozen or two launches to gain experience and knowledge to pump back into the New Glen project. If they can have a tourist soak up $200k of the cost, then that's great because the astronaut doesn't actually do a whole lot on these trips, save for being a human guinea pig to send vitals back down.

Once New Glen starts launching in 2020, they want to quickly move past human certification, so practicing with New Shepard is less costly in terms of critical-path length and probably financially too-- bigger rocket, bigger spend per test.

I don't think a lot of people get this. These "space tourist" companies don't have an end goal as space tourism. The problem with launch vehicle companies (launch PROVIDERS) is that they don't always have something to launch (provide). To sustain your company you need to launch often. Rather, to sustain the low price on your vehicle you need to launch often.

You also need to get to a high TRL for confidence from contractors. People are more willing to take risks than someone sending up $100m+ satellites or vehicles. Those successful human missions get you to a TRL 9 pretty quickly.

But many of these companies have much bigger aims than tourism. Tourism is part of it, but more like orbital hotels, lunar hotels, etc. Not a short trip. But also mining. There's A LOT of money in mining once the vehicles get cheap enough. Which they aren't if you're flying a few times a year (like how most things come down in price when you manufacture at scale).

Nit pick: The point of the ride isn't to get 0 gravity. IT IS TO GO TO SPACE! That has a value much higher than that 5k 0g rides. Sure, 0g is part of it, but that's not why ANYONE is buying a ticket.

> Nit pick: The point of the ride isn't to get 0 gravity.

Yeah, not to mention that this is actually an impossible goal. And if it's the weightlessness sensation you are after, just get a new vomit comet. You need an airplane for that, not a rocket.

> IT IS TO GO TO SPACE!

Yeah, you need a rocket for that. A very small one. Oh, you mean to stay in space? Yeah, now you need a pretty big one.

>Nit pick: The point of the ride isn't to get 0 gravity. IT IS TO GO TO SPACE!

This is an incredibly important and underrated point. People aren't going (just) for the roller coaster ride. They're chasing the overview effect, the perspective-altering thrill of seeing the Earth from space.

I suspect a lot of people will pay handsomely for it. If they do (and it works despite the trip's brevity), prices will steadily drop as design and build costs get amortized away to nothing. Eventually it could be accessible to the majority of people (in developed countries), at least at a level where if you saved up you could get to space once in your lifetime — a sort of secular pilgrimage for the 21st century.

Given the apparent change in the worldviews of those who experience this effect, if we're lucky it might even help make the world a little bit better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect

https://www.overviewinstituteaustralia.org/the-overview-effe...

8 people out of 536 that have gone to space report the overview effect. That's not necessarily a huge impact.

The eight examples mentioned in the Wikipedia page are far from an exhaustive list. They don't include many examples from the original Frank White book, to start. (White also defines it quite broadly, to include the feeling you get in an airplane when watching tiny cars moving along the ground.)

Even if the hit rate is low, that doesn't necessarily deter thrill-seekers. 4,800 people have successfully climbed Mt. Everest (8,300 times[0]) at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars ($45k-70k[1], $11k for the royalty alone[2]), and the very real risk of death (375 deaths). The success rate is about half,[3] up from under 30% before 2006.[4]

[0] http://www.alanarnette.com/blog/2017/12/17/everest-by-the-nu...

[1] https://www.alpineascents.com/climbs/mount-everest/price-sch...

[2] Down from $25k before 2014 https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140219-moun...

[3] https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-attempt-to-climb-Mt-Ev...

[4] https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/everest-by-the-numbers/in...

It will be the ultimate Wealthy Boy ride/experience.

It's too bad the average scientist, especially astronomers, astrophysicists won't be able to afford to ride the ride?

(I'm not suspose to bring up the wealth divide in America, but it's been just so---what's the word--obvious. I'm at the point where I'm thinking about the future. A future where companies will just cater to the small percentage of the population with the biggest wad? Yea--I'm envious. )

At first this will be true, as with many new products. But as hardware and development costs are amortized over time and competitors enter the market, we can expect prices to drop to marginal cost. That could easily be in reach of ordinary people, somewhere in the 5 digits. (I don't believe the $10 million estimate quoted elsewhere below for a second — and the 'analyst' who made it offhand in a quote to a news organization doesn't seem to have backed it up anywhere.)

By the way, your account has been dead for a very long time. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14766847

You can perhaps get the same effect by riding a U2 spy plane. I remember seeing a video (this one I believe [1]) where journalist James May got to ride one and you could hear the elation in his voice. "Like a view to eternity... Nothing like twice the altitude of an airliner." Welcome to the world of high flight indeed.

[1] https://youtu.be/1PmYItnlY5M

Same curved earth perspective when Adam from MythBusters flew in a U2: https://www.facebook.com/MythBusters/videos/adam's-u2-flight...

This is really a good point about going to space. People pay 20K USD to fly MIG-25 in Russia. One does not get zero g on those flights, so money covers the thrill of observing Earth at 25 km at 1750 mph.

You can get perhaps a minute of zero g on a MiG-25, that's just not what people ride it for.

In that case the smart money would be in orbital transfer. The oversupply of capacity to get to low earth orbit will create a demand to go further.

If the object really is

> a dozen or two launches to gain experience and knowledge to pump back into the New Glen project

then it's probably cheaper to never fly a tourist. It's not great if the revenue from tourists is smaller than the opportunity cost of making the thing safe for tourists.

Indeed, I think one important factor that is overlooked is that they are gaining experience in manned launches, sub orbital or not once you put a person on a rocket it’s a whole new ball game.

This is can in the long run give them an advantage over SpaceX depending on how fast SpaceX can actually shift towards manned launches.

> $200K per ride for less than 3 minutes of zero gravity

There's more than just weightlessness to appreciate on a suborbital flight. Plus the 8 minutes up and 8-20 minutes back down are probably pretty fun too.

apparently even ex fighter pilots say the return trip on soyuz is the craziest, scariest ride of their lives.

Since this is sub-orbital it won't be nearly as intense as reentry in something moving as fast as the Soyuz capsule.

That's not actually true, Soyuz re-enter on a very shallow profile, shedding a lot of speed over a lot of time with relatively low G. Additionally, Soyuz is a lifting body, which makes the profile even shallower.

Mercury had 8g deceleration on orbital reentry vs 11-12g on suborbital one.

I was surprised to see a higher deceleration on suborbital flights - is that due to a flatter trajectory for the return from orbit?

Agreed. Let’s say if I earned $200K/yr, and was close to “retirement”. I’d consider working an extra year to take a 90 min orbit in space. I would not make that same decision for a 3 min joy ride.

You cannot save 100% of your pre-tax salary. That said, you make an interesting point

> You cannot save 100% of your pre-tax salary

Depends on the industry in which you earn your salary. Some are not above the board.

Interesting. Which industries in particular?

Illegal ones

And where you work. I've had Dubai-based companies try to sell me on "work here, pay zero taxes". (I politely told him I cared more about human rights.)

By the time your reach retirement age you should have saved enough to last you the rest of your life, so that effectively any additional income can be spent completely.

Would you be interested in a financing program that allows you to take your flight and pay it off throughout your life? No prepayment penalties.

The earlier you do it, the longer you can live life sharing your experience and viewing everything through its perspective, instead of just fly and die maybe a decade later or so.

This sounds like a monumentally terrible deal for the creditor. There's nothing securing that loan, if the debtor went bankrupt the creditor would lose all of it. If it was secured by something like the value of a home then that's just a regular reverse mortgage.

Even the initial price is not far from the credit card limits middle class people with good credit can obtain unsecured. Obviously the interest rate on that would be usurious, but Blue Origin has enough marginal profit margin (and cash) that it could conceivably finance the program at reasonable/zero interest with tolerable risk.

Just noodling about the economics, 7 passengers at $200K each is $1.4M gross revenue. So assuming very low earth orbit (basically you just need to be above enough of the atmosphere that you won't re-enter before the end of your first orbit) that is still a very low cost for a Falcon9 launch given that the second stage is not recovered. So you need to recover both stages operationally "close" to where they lifted off so that you minimize refurbishment/transport costs.

I'm guessing that would be that the second stage provides retropulsion to get you back to nominal zero velocity over the return point.

So that would be launch, booster returns to the pad, and the second stage pushes you up enough to insure an orbit, then your orient for return. Enjoy the view etc, and then the second stage relights to cancel your velocity to 0 as you arrive over the launch facility (you'll have to scoot 1000 miles or so east as well given planetary rotation) and then separate for a parachute landing of perhaps both the capsule and the second stage booster.

Sounds pretty complex. But you would have to recover all equipment if you wanted to have a chance as meeting the economics of that.

> Enjoy the view etc, and then the second stage relights to cancel your velocity to 0

That is not feasible. Your second stage would have to be roughly as large as an entire orbital rocket in order to slow itself down from orbital speeds to zero, which means your first stage would have to be massive in order to push the second stage into orbit.

The reason every vehicle that re-enters the atmosphere uses a heat shield is because it's way easier to carry a relatively light heat shield that sheds off the speed than to carry the massive amount of fuel to shed off the same speed.

See https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/

If instead of a circular orbit you just went for an arc with a really high apoapsis you could probably burn a little fuel to reduce the forward momentum to zero, and then proceed to slowly plummet back to earth... which then means you need a really big heat shield as that gravitational potential energy turns back into kinetic and you smack into the atmosphere at a ridiculous velocity. Scratch that, too much Kerbal.

a tall suborbital parabola that falls back into the atmosphere at an 85 degree angle is basically the same re-entry heat as if you were to do what you described, fly the parabola, and thrust retrograde at apoapsis to cancel out the downrange velocity, then fall into the atmosphere dead vertical.

It's horizontal velocity (actual LEO velocity) that causes the heating effects a Soyuz or Dragon type capsule needs to survive with heat shield on re-entry.

> Sounds pretty complex. But you would have to recover all equipment if you wanted to have a chance as meeting the economics of that.

All equipment, and especially the people in the equipment. One "safety incident" would crash the whole operation.

And for marginally more than the cost of a single orbit, you could stay up there for days or weeks.

I've been on the Zero Gravity Corp plane- it's cool, but if I had the money to drop, I would absolutely rather go to space. Minutes of sustained zero g would be mindblowing compared to what I experienced.

Genuine question: what is the difference? In both cases you are just falling. Is the difference just an effect of atmospheric turbulence?

In parabolic flight you are only weightless for 20-30 seconds at a time. You then experience high g forces going back up and repeat.

Consider, people can also feel weightless by jumping yet extending that to 20-30 seconds is worth 5k.

If "jumping" is a valid comparison, how does it compare with skydiving? You can freefall for 1-2 minutes doing that, with roughly zero training.

Freefall at terminal velocity is 1g not zero gravity. So, you only really get zero g for a at low speeds near the aircraft.

PS: You can do hours of floating on air in an indoor wind tunnel (ex: www.iflyworld.com), but again that's not weightless.

Thanks. I didn't really understand weightlessness until this made me think about it. If I stood on a normal weighing scales, falling vertically feet first, the scales would show my weight when at terminal velocity, because the force of the air on the bottom of the scales would equal my acceleration under gravity. And the same force would be transmitted to me by the scales. Then if we take away the scales, the air below me is acting on me the same way as the ground normally does. Same in the indoor wind tunnel where the air is moving up instead of me moving down, I'm still at terminal velocity there.

If I was free falling in a vacuum, or somewhere that the air was being accelerated at the same rate as my fall (like a space station or a vomit comet), there would be no such force, the scales would read zero, and I'd experience what they call weightlessness.

Is that all correct?

Yes.

>I really appreciate Blue Origin's methodical approach to building this system. I note that they are closer to being operational than Virgin Galactic who I consider their primary competitor.

It's also worth mentioning that Virgin Galactic has eschewed the Karman Line, preferring the old "50 mile" definition the Air Force uses for astronaut wings. SpaceShipTwo's apogee is expected to be under 100km during this test campaign, though they have said that heavy test equipment sandbags performance.

I think the price difference between 200k and 5k might be the very difference of a quick suborbital trip and the vomit comet. I will wait for better economics :-)

Sounds like they have a business plan similar to Tesla —- sell expensive model s (200k$ flight ) then work their way down to affordable levels

There's more to a suborbital flight than weightlessness. It is the chance to see that view that may matter the most.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com