Branson and crew reach space, return in runway landing
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Not unless 2 (San Francisco and Santa Clara) is more than half of 9.
> That’s even outside SF and Silicon Valley.
Nope, its pretty much exactly SF and Silicon Valley.
https://cdn.nar.realtor/sites/default/files/documents/2021-q...
Edit since I’m getting downvoted: yes the ultra rich can and do live off debt with their stock as collateral, but that gets you to the “merely” living a luxury lifestyle point. It’s not a viable mechanism for funding SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, etc, which is the kind of “interesting stuff” this thread was talking about.
They can deduct dept/interest payments from taxes and never actually have to sell a lot of their stock. That way their wealth can accumulate and they don‘t really generate income. Almost like the tax code is skewed in their favor.
The interest rates aren't particularly important in this concept. Just that you have enough collateral so that you can life off the loan while the collateral appreciates in value, so that you're not forced to sell it.
Maybe an accountant can chime in.
I like the idea of an undersea utopia, but I don't think I'd enjoy the reality of funding and developing it enough to want to spend my fortune on it. It sounds like a lot of work and more than a full time job, you can't just throw $100M at your cause and expect it to be done in a way that meets your vision, you need to be there to oversee and guide it and make sure your money is being spent wisely. (a good example is Disney's EPCOT -- Disney's vision was to make it a real living city, after his death it was turned into just another theme park)
A home in the Mediterranean and a yacht sound much more inviting, not to mention less risky than living in an undersea habitat that I just built.
Most Millionaires do all kinds of interesting things, it’s just that those things are in the same realm that ordinary people can. Eg they go to Aspen and ski, which lots of non-millionaires do, but unlike the plebes they stay in a super high-end hotel or condo, or just buy a vacation home there if they visit often enough.
Being a millionaire, < 10M net worth, is not actually that rare or exceptional.
In any case, a millionaire can technically have wealth spanning 3 orders of magnitude; no way this could be a homogeneous category regarding what's a "millionaire" is capable of financially.
Few hundred millionaires are passionate enough about something to spend their entire fortune on it.
Though it didn't break that down further by age. I suspect a good number of those are retirees with significant savings (and paid-off real estate) to be spent down over the next few decades.
(Also, a millionaire is technically someone with at least $1M net worth; thanks to inflation, this title is now more accessible than ever. Just owning a semi-decent house in the Valley affords you that.)
Of course, many of those people don't really own the house, the bank does... and for many of them, their million dollar equity in their house exists only on paper.
His wife’s commentary is the best part
If I were a millionaire, I would still be afraid to try out deep diving or rock climbing, even though I greatly enjoy reading about them or watching the videos. My experience is that I will panic in certain situations and that could easily be fatal.
Just yesterday we had a thread about the famous cave rescue here. Brrr, the very idea is attractive and repulsive at the same time.
Perhaps Branson has a lower than average threshold of risk aversion.
Our funds have to last for the rest of our lives. There is no way we could suddenly use our 'wealth' to fund a 'millionaire' project.
If you earn no interest and expect to spend $6000 a month forever without ever gaining any passive money accumulation on your principal, you'd go for 27 years before you'd spent your two million.
There are also many things you can do with your life if you have $2M (or indeed $1M) that aren't available to pensioners. I'll grant you, they've got some pretty sweet pensions: that seems unusual, but hey, collective bargaining gets better terms for workers and that certainly qualifies.
They're not poor unless they're catastrophically bad at money management, but you are indeed a little out of touch: the idea of living off the interest on your wealth is pretty insane and unattainable to any remotely normal person.
Also I'm not sure why you say someone with $2M can achieve something that someone with $6000 pension a month can't...you can definitely borrow against your pension and grab a large lump sump...
The elephant in the room is that say you have $2MM in the bank and are living off that interest, or are a retired union/public service worker and then you look at how long it took at how long it took to achieve your financial success.
If you save 1/2 of salary in VTI (say 100k-150k range) coming out of a bachelors degree and work for 10-15 years at one of the large tech companies you will have 1.5-2MM USD, which is easily enough to retire on. And you'll be like 32-37years old and still be able to climb Mt. Everest, hike the PCT or AT and probably still have your health.
However if you are a teacher starting out in California, that would be a 44-50k year range https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/sa/cefavgsalaries.asp which yes is really low. Then you work for 40 years and hopefully are able to make enough pension contributions to be able to retire at age 62 and have a decent pension of that 5-6k/mo. By this time lots of people are starting to have health issues and will not be able to go on the adventures that a 32-37y/o would be able to. Also you kinda have to work an extra 30 years.
TL;DR: Incentive structure for being a teacher is not really there, also benefits are not really there. Maybe Scandinavian countries have a better compensation and work life balance?
Incentive to work in tech industry or similar high-paying jobs is there, as financial independence is readily obtainable within 10-15 years.
I can't speak for San Fran, but I'm on a pretty good (by UK standards) tech salary in London. The cost of living (rents mostly) still make putting a high % of salary away every month a challenge. If you have kids as well, it's almost a non-starter.
The marginal tax rate means the only mechanism to do this efficiently are via pension contributions (similar to a US 401k), and these are locked until age 55 (60 by the time i get there).
Financial independence in your 30s is an enormous privilege.
Also salary’s are much higher and taxes are a bit lower than uk/eu. Housing is not too expensive if you rent a room for a couple years, but this is different between a 22/yo and 35/yo.
After taxes (long-term capital gains, let's assume the 15% or 20% bracket, unless Biden gets his wish to increase that), most likely around $13,500 (@ 15%) per year, that would be reduced to $76,500/year, which is $6,375/month.
On the other hand, if you have a "safe withdrawal rate", as fma suggested, (and which seems to be very wise to protect against down years which could permanently reduce your nest egg) then that income would be halved, requiring approximately double the initial investment to result in a $6k post-tax income.
And as far as it being "the idea of living off the interest on your wealth is pretty insane and unattainable", this is just categorically untrue; many mid- to upper-class families in the U.S. with two incomes make in the $300k to $1M range, so even if they only put away 4% to 10% in their 401(k) or other retirement plans for 30 years, they'd easily make that number.
If you have $1M returning 9% per year, and withdraw $90k/year, you're either going to be spending less in real money in each year -- as inflation reduces the value of $90k and the amount of tax increases each year-- or you're going to be withdrawing more each year and depleting the principal.
I'm not at all sure $300k will get you to that 'living on your interest' point in all places in the USA, either, and that makes it tougher on the argument. There are plenty of places where $300k will not let you put away a blessed thing in any retirement plan, and those are the places where people earn these 'insane' sums.
I'm not sure why you say that when this is now the dominant form of pension/retirement planning in countries like the US and the UK. People generally buy annuities with their pot, or keep it invested and go in to 'drawdown', living off the returns.
The couple with $6000/mo pension are probably guaranteed that income for life. It may even be inflation adjusted annually.
Someone aged around 60 who wants a inflation adjusted lifetime annuity here in the UK is going to start on around 2%/yr these days[0]. This isn't unreasonable given a 3% inflation expectation, 30 years of life expectancy, and 30 year UK gov gilts yielding just 1.2%[1]. So $6000/mo on equivalent terms could require a $3.6M pot
You can invest your lump sum more aggressively of course, but if you're not disciplined enough to keep withdrawals below a safe rate (widely believed to be 3-4% for a stock portfolio), and suffer a bad run of variance, you'll risk running out of money and dying in poverty.
[0] https://www.hl.co.uk/retirement/annuities/best-buy-rates
[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/Bond/TMBMKGB-30Y?count...
Multibillionaires are a different story.
Even he now admits that "Virgin Brides" (actual name) wasn't his strongest idea :-D
It sounds like he thought it would be funny, and was willing to throw a few million dollars at trolling. Not hard for somebody who can throw more tens of millions at a joyride in a rocket.
At the other end of the spectrum is the anxiety about what other people think and say about us and how well we will do when faced with a challenge or change we brought on ourselves, especially when we really stick our necks out on something completely new.
HN is full of people who are maestras and maestros of technology who are sticking their necks out in the capricious people-centric world of business. It’s a site built for entrepreneurs even if the majority of us visitors (myself included) are tech janitors.
And in terms of the transformation the most surprising part, I think, wasn’t the dress. It was the lipstick.
(Also, in before "survivorship bias!!": yes, there are also many more risk takers who went broke - that doesn't change the fact that Branson/Bezos/Gates etc. have a higher tolerance for risk than most)
I think a more interesting question is comparing someone with $100 to someone with $1 billion risking their entire net worths - who has taken on more risk?
The poor person is likely to starve to death. I doubt the billionaire would ever experience that hardship even if he lost everything, he probably still has some lines of support. Hell, just his reputation alone can probably get him an enormous loan or job or something else that other people could only ever hope to have.
Masayoshi Son is famous for losing more money than anyone in history, and he goes out and raises the largest VC fund in history (which is a laughable failure) and is doing it again (apparently logic doesn't apply). Once you reach that status people will worship you even for your failures. Nobody ever pays attention to the person who is struggling just to get by.
https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/billionaire-news/...
This is actually _extremely_ unlikely in the US or Western Europe. Social safety nets do in fact exist, and while they have all sorts of problems they do generally prevent starvation to death. Now eating things that get you to ill health, that is much more believable.
The idea that rich people take more risks is laughable. Rich people simply gain more from having taken the same risk as a result of the compounding effect of capital investment.
No one was arguing that. The point being made is that Branson is taking a significant risk given all he has to lose - which is far more than a non-wealthy person - if he were to die.
I mean this is not a debatable point. Studies on criminal behavior for example show that relative poverty massively increases the probability of risk-taking criminal behavior.
Jobs which pose high risk of serious injury and death also pay a premium for that risk, which shows there is an intimate relationship between resources available and willingness to take risks, which would typically make risk-taking less appealing to the wealthier party.
People generally perceive themselves as having more to lose when they are rich than when they are poor, since people generally value wealth and the material comforts its affords them. Attacking me personally, by inferring sinister social views, for accurately describing reality is not a constructive way to engage with the world.
And when you risk sudden catastrophic death, I'm not sure that the wealthy person really has more to lose than a poor person, we all only get one life. His heirs will be taken care of either way, how can his life be valued higher than, say, one of his pilots?
That is perhaps true, but I was just making a point about his wealth, and comparing him to another person who is the same in all respects but that.
>>And when you risk sudden catastrophic death, I'm not sure that the wealthy person really has more to lose than a poor person,
The life of a billionaire is incredible relative to the life of a poor person.
The point I was trying to make is that that's not necessarily true. There are many non-billionaires that have led incredible lives and have made a big impact in the world and there are billionaires whose biggest contribution to humanity is increasing their own wealth and power.
They lose the universe. I don't see a distinction, to the person. To the outside world it's bound to seem very different, but they're the ones left behind to care.
I would also answer the 'as a mega-rich person he has much more happiness and satisfaction to lose than a poor man who is just poor and wanting to die!' question by asking: how do you think these hyper-achievers get to where they are?
I think it's possible that the relative angst level doesn't change, either. It's just that the poor man punches the guy on the adjacent barstool and gets thrown in jail. The rich man punches a COUNTRY, or a class, or a demographic, and typically gets cheered for his trouble.
>>They lose the universe. I don't see a distinction, to the person.
One loses access to billions, and the other to access to thousands.
People who 'make it', to the degree Branson has, have far less need to take risks, because they have already achieved most if not all of their financial goals. Yes they still want to achieve more, but they are undoubtedly far more satisfied with their current life than a typical person, and could enjoy being at their station for years, immensely, due to the comforts, luxuries and experiences they can afford to partake in.
I think contrarianism, when taken to the extreme, like arguing the rich don't have more to lose than the poor, becomes unconstructive.
The ego gets wrapped up in arguing against some allegedly oppressive/elitist truism, and that leads to biased analysis that selectively examines the evidence to push the contrarian position.
I would argue that the rich on that scale have MORE dissatisfaction than the poor, otherwise they would have cashed out and retired quite happily. How dissatisfied do you have to be to leave the planet?
I don't think you understand entrepreneurs that well. They're a mixed blessing at best, but a worthwhile societal sparkplug if properly harnessed… and they are defined by a burning ambition and dissatisfaction.
I'll grant you they keep score and are very aware of the high value of what they've achieved (some are even driven to inflate this with obvious lies) but if you think that's the same thing as ease and satisfaction, you'd be mistaken.
He's still a Billionaire. He didn't "put his money where his mouth is", he bought a custom spaceship using a fraction of his enormous net worth, and rode it out of the atmosphere as a stunt. He hopes he can make a business out of it for other rich people who want to do the same.
This isn't inspiring. Virgin Galactic spacecraft are purely recreational. They offer zero scientific or business purposes outside of selling wealthy people tickets on a rare adventure to nowhere.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/features/nasa-support...
A series of disputes in the early 1990s caused tension between Virgin Atlantic and British Airways, which viewed Virgin as an emerging competitor. Virgin subsequently accused British Airways of poaching its passengers, hacking its computers, and leaking stories to the press that portrayed Virgin negatively. After the so-called campaign of "dirty tricks", British Airways settled the case, giving £500,000 to Branson, a further £110,000 to his airline, and had to pay legal fees of up to £3 million. Branson distributed his compensation (the so-called "BA bonus") among his staff.
Edit: I should add that I find any opportunity to hear Chris Hadfield talk about space is well worth the time.
I hope Moore's law applies to this!
So yes if somehow putting engineers and labs in space allows us to iterate faster or spaceship designs then the first requirement is achieved. Then there's the question if the masses want to travel to space. Unlikely unless it just so happens to speed travel and reduce cost for getting from Earth point A to Earth point B.
We'll see.
This is a thing that possibly facilitates exponential progress, but it is by no means a prerequisite. I have a hard time believing that compute power has been the bottleneck in chip design for many years now.
Other current counterexamples include solar cells and batteries. They have been improving exponentially, but no recursion to speak of comes to mind.
Otherwise why not just say {qualifier} exponential growth.
Considering that many of the bread and butter NP-hard problems are actually inspired by chip design, this is blatantly untrue.
Though I do believe progress is currently held back more by the closed software ecosystems and secrecy around design rules.
To draw a parallel: as the improvement of computing hardware performance slows down, one would expect more attention to be paid to software performance optimization, so that more of the potential of the hardware is actually used.
In the same vein, as lithography improvements slow down, one would expect more attention to be paid to e.g. the routing problem (but also placement of gates and buffers/repeaters, logic optimizations for timing closure, and others) so that more of the potential of the lithography is actually used.
So:
> are you saying that faster chips are actually becoming possible because more compute power has become available through the previous generation of chips, at this point?
Yes.
This is obvious when you look at it in the extreme: chips like the Intel 8080 were designed by hand. As in, the shapes to be created via lithography were drawn by hand. Doing this for a modern CPU core is plain impossible. We can only design those because older CPU cores already exist and can run automated tools that do this job for us.
It's less obvious but still true for generational improvements. The chip design problems are becoming computationally harder in each generation, for two main reasons. First, the designs are simply becoming bigger (more gates, more wires). Second, the design rules are becoming more complex.[0] If you kept the chips that you use to create the design constant, then each design generation would take more wall-time than the previous one to go through the automated design tools, until at some point everything just becomes infeasibly slow.
Using faster chips to run the physical design tools on allows the designs to be processed faster, which leads to a faster feedback loop with logic designers (the people who write Verilog), which then leads to a faster feedback loop with architects, which ultimately leads to faster/better designs for the next generation of chips. This may be surprising for software developers -- we get grumpy when our feedback loops take minutes. Chip designers have to deal with feedback loops that take days in some cases for the physical design.
[0] For example, at the lowest routing layers you can't just draw wires wherever you like, but have to satisfy some pretty byzantine rules about things like minimum metal area, distance to neighboring wires, allowed shapes of wires, allowed shapes of holes between wires, and so on. These rules exist because of limitations in the capabilities of the lithography: the process engineers are able to make features smaller, but at the cost of forbidding certain shapes that would cause problems for physical or chemical reasons.
Eventually, Mars (or other places like the Moon or asteroids) may become a base of operations for launch due to lower gravity. This could, in principle, make things like space based solar feasible. Such large structures would probably be best built by mechanized astronauts just like Starships on Earth. …and see experiments with EVA assembly of telescopes and other structures NASA did in the 1980s and 90s… orders of magnitude faster than space robotics, held back by insanely high cost of human spaceflight. So if you made human spaceflight cheap, that’d make large space structures cheap as well. Mars or the Moon or asteroids could provide lower cost and lower ecological footprint propellants, enabling more space travel and potentially reducing terrestrial high-impact industry.
Curious about your estimate on the market size here. How many potential customers are there, worldwide, in your estimation?
The existing providers suck. There are plenty of villas, chalets, et cetera in places where Starlink would be the winning offering. These may not represent a large number of people. But they do represent a lot of dollars.
This is before tapping the moving target market, e.g. yachts, planes, backpackers, et cetera.
The arbitrage opportunity alone is massive, and HFT companies have put a ton of money into it: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/wall-st...
I doubt that anyone I know would pass on a ticket if it was affordable.
It also seems like a dumb way to die if you aren't contributing to a mission in someway. It's cool to die as a researcher, explorer, or pioneer like Branson. But as a popcorn eater who can afford to overpay for a roller coaster ride ?
On second thought, if the marketing was good and I had kids, I admit I be tempted.
Actually I’ve never understood how this was true for microchips. Anyone know? I understood it as the industry just Moore’s law for planning iterations?
I would love to see someone track this at 18 month intervals starting today.
Although, depressingly, growing at the rate of Moore's law, it would still take 24 years to get 1 million people in space.
I hope we accomplish more of the latter.
EDIT folks this is just a benign and playful post, the downvotes and flagging is completely unnecessary
It didn't help that the narration was just awful. When the stream buffer finally started playing and we got a mashed up snippet of Branson talking, she (the narrator/commentator) commented that it was late because it was really far away... what!? I know it was off the top of her head but that's just stupid.
So: Congrats on the technical accomplishment, but the rest of the dog and pony show made it look like the worlds most expensive carnival ride.
Sounds like it might have been a joke? I'd giggle for sure.
The most striking thing about this is not the idea of suborbital flight (not new), nor the involvement of a private company (also not new), nor the idea of a spacecraft launching from a plane (also not new).
What's new and mind-blowing is that space travel can be an experience that people will pay for. You're not taking a suborbital flight, you're becoming an astronaut.
As the initial novelty of "being to space" wears off, there will be demand (and money) to fund ever more unusual space experiences.
At some point, it will become clear that there's not just one or two space travel companies, but a space travel industry.
Then what?
This is like saying being a passenger on a plane makes me a pilot.
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/hilton-hotel-on-moon-...
Create a bigger space station than the ISS?
What Branson & his team did today was incredible and will pay off in spades for the future of humanity.
I'd rather live in a world with folks like Branson instead of a world made up of the astonishingly short-sighted naysayers here.
Terrestrial tourism has already pretty much destroyed this planet, what long-term good can you foresee here, seriously?
Especially if we compare today to what we should get from JWST.
Today basically seems like the ultimate roller coaster/amusement park ride.
It just makes me long for the JWST launch all the more.
Top speed: ~4000 kph
Orbital Speed: ~28,000 kph, which is 7 times the speed, 49 times the kinetic energy.
Meanwhile, Elon's old car is in space, moving away from earth at about 60,000 kph
Source: https://www.whereisroadster.com/
[0] http://www.parabolicarc.com/2021/05/08/democratizing-space-o...
Astronauts and cosmonauts who have been on the ISS's famous globe window...it's not like they were overwhelmed or collapsed onto the ground crying because of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSXi9PTh96w
What makes our jaw drop is wired into our brain for evolutionary purposes.
A wonderful wheat field = means abundant food
An amazing lake/river = means abundant drinking water
An incredibly attractive woman = means possibility to pass down genes
If travelling at 600mph and 40000ft gets old so fast, I think so will the trip at 50 km or 100 or even 200.
Bezos and Branson are happy and pumped because they are the people behind the effort and managed to allocate raw materials, human resources, goodwill, money...in a way which made them succeed at something so hard as space travel.
But it's not unlike what the CEO of BioNtech and Moderna felt, or even Zuckerberg , Brin or Gates for their endevours.
Being able to see the curvature of the very planet you live on shouldn't have to be a a rare and expensive privilege. After all, you were born on this planet, and it would be nice to see roughly half of it in one glance from space. You don't know what that feels like if you haven't experienced it.
Rare and expensive privileges give us satisfaction.
Besides the things we are wired to like for evolutionary purposes, the more expensive and exclusive a thing is, the more we are satisfied with it.
It's not the thing in itself, but the validation we get because it's something done by few.
As soon as you step into a commercial plane you look down for like 1 hour and then go straight to the movies.
As soon as you get in a private jet it seems amazing for like 5 hours before you realize that you are in an RV which is capable of flying.
The half life of non evolutionary driven experiences is very short.
Sorry to be a party pooper, but why should space tourism be promoted and developed in the first place? Given the ongoing climate crisis is this responsible? I mean, what's the end game here? Having near space infested with tourists taking selfies and over-consuming like in pre-covid Venice [0]?
Or they could, you know, stop exploiting the working class to build their massive amounts of wealth and instead pay their workers properly, prevent wealth inequality, do something about climate change etc. etc.
I honestly find it so egregious that anyone could support this crap because "ooooh space!"
I guess my point is does the average person struggling to put food on the table really care that a new industry was 'created'? Is there a place in this industry for those people?
I think this touches a nerve though with the HN crowd, as this kind of argument tends to make them rankle
Cost of ISS Crew time: 130k USD per hour
[This is if you bother them for their time I guess]
Can they scale this up to taking humans & large payloads to orbit? It seems hard to run this business sustainably on millionaire tourists, 4-minute science experiments and ads. Anyone have an idea of what their business plan is?
> "The current SpaceShip III is designed to provide just a few minutes of weightlessness and views for space tourists for Virgin Galactic, and is a production version of SpaceShipTwo, with improved maintenance and flight rate performance and does not have point to point transportation capabilities as previously envisioned in 2016."
“We’ll be sure to capture his magical words and share them with the world when they are available.”
Had a hard time keeping my breakfast down. Geez. Seems they should have purchased time on the Starlink sat network for comms.
This was followed by:
“Remember the day, remember where you are, remember who you shared this with, and remember the name Virgin Galactic, because today, space is Virgin territory.”
If over-hype leads to business success, I guess they are on their way.
The professional, highly trained pilot/astronauts were referred to as Dave and Mike. Every mention of Branson was Sir Richard Branson.
Amazing tech, but $250K for 6 minutes of weightlessness? Not exactly democratizing space. It might work out eventually, but hard to see the payoff for the massive investment to date.
I guess for many it was hard to see the payoff of "beep, beep" on October 4th, 1957. I likely wouldn't see its importance - by myself, but I've got good explanations. Now I see.
Virgin Galactic flight is lower than what Blue Origin promises to do in several days. Both of those systems are examples of pretty good engineering, and both promise even better performance in the future. I think VG's approach is overall better on the grounds of more inherent safety. And the safer the flights are, the easier it's to make them accessible to everybody - thus the path to the democratization.
The big investments are done today and last decades - remember SpaceShipOne? - but today we see another milestone reached, and even though it's $250K for 4 minutes (?) of weightlessness, it's way more than unavailability of the past. But we won't stop here, of course.
With the rise of environmental awareness and even talks of introducing environmental crimes, I hope these companies address these problems before becoming generally available to the public.
The carbon footprint per capita is quite incomparable.
To use as an analogy, can you measure the impact of Chopin or Mozart's music? Mozart made a lot of money performing at private events sponsored by the riches, as well as from lessons for their children.
They are not breaking any frontier or discovering anything, just using a huge amount of resources and energy to put very wealthy people in zero-g flights for x minutes.
I don't see how we can justify that given how unsustainable that industry is.
I'm not sure how spacecraft compare if you measure km as in maximum height reached.
Quick explanation of orbital vs suborbital spaceflight
On top of that, a seat will cost half a million dollars.
SpaceX and maybe Blue Origin can do that, but Virgin would need a different aircraft.
Space X and Blue Origin are design for space exploration
> What are we talking about as far as going into space? This craft resembles a passenger plane more than a rocket.
Whatever plans they may have for international flights, they seem unrelated to the craft we saw today - the proposed design in the article you linked is for a new "conventional" supersonic plane, not going to orbit and back à la Starship with SpaceShipTwo.
Also, I thought Virgin Galactic was founded specifically with space tourism in mind, not transportation?
What space x proposed with their point to point listing cities such a Zürich Switzerland is insane. If you launch in the middle of Lake Zürich you will blow out every window in the city and probably permanently deathen part of the population. Zürich is a tiny city. Thinking there would be multiple flights like this per day when we can't eve deal with the plane noise is insane.
https://www.virgingalactic.com/articles/virgin-galactic-unve...
Apogee between 50mi and 100km (which are two "lines" of where "space" begins.)
The Kármán line (FL3300) could be considered "space" since it's roughly where aerodynamic lift is no longer possible.
Edit: I retract my counter -- Bender uber alles.
Sure am.
Don't underestimate the motivational pull of such shows on kids. I'd rather the best brains of the coming generation to concentrate on space and aeronautics than on pushing even more intrusive ads on the rest of us.
Try looking down sometime, at the billions of people who need better things than space travel.
It feels like every 10 years we bail out airlines when we hit a bad recession.
I would really question how much of a business model there will be for this at this price point once you don't make a headline by just taking a flight on it.
Almost every major hard-tech innovation was once prohibitively expensive. Look at solar panels, cars, phones, computers, etc. The cost comes (way) down later on with economies of scale and perfection of the production process.
Ironically, this is far more accessible than space has ever been. Hopefully it’s just a start. We want orbital flight and eventually flight to (and from) other celestial bodies to come down to this price (this is the goal for SpaceX’s Starship).
Oh snap, I was mistaken.
~~The death of Burt Rutan changed a lot :( As far as I understand, the original launch craft was lost in that crash, too.~~
For $250k. Including beverages.
I'll be interested to see if Branson stops there or tries to go for orbit.
The obvious long-term play would be a space hotel, because the Scaled craft is really just a fast car ride. And It's taken a very long time indeed to get that far.
Orbit is an order of magnitude more difficult, and a full-time space station at least one or two orders of magnitude more difficult than that.
See Virgin Orbit [0] (a separate entity to Virgin Galactic)
SpaceX is doing more ambitious things and already launched people into space.
I think most people can’t think of situation for the near future that a rocket would help solve. The other side is people wishing money was better spent on issues of the world.
I can’t help but admit it is a bit solution in search of a problem.
Virgin Galactic believes there is a market for tourism packages to space at $250,000 per seat.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3385856/amp/...
Eventually it will be minutes
PS: I usually hate snarky one-liners, especially on HN which is supposed to have more substance, but in this instance I stand by my one-liner because even after giving it some thought I think it's a valid reply. Asking for a reason is just useless after a few iterations.
The first time I noticed this was when I was still pretty young and watched one of those nature documentary movies (The Living Desert, possibly). When, completely by chance, conditions are right life "explodes". There is no reason apart from that it can. And then it all goes away (meaning everything dies!) when conditions are not good any more. Stuff (and life) just happens.
How do you make sense of the intensifying forest fires, hurricanes, heat waves, and someone burning fossil fuels to go to space?
[1] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016EGUGA..1815380C/abstra...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_North_American_heat_wave
[3] http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2010/06/...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_territory_tempe...