Virgin Galactic unveils commercial spaceship | Hacker News Reader

Virgin Galactic unveils commercial spaceship

news.yahoo.com

65 pointsprakash15 comments

There are probably several people around HN who are science-y, grew up with sci-fi and space fiction and have $200,000 to spare...

Anyone willing to own up to booking a trip?

If I had the money, I would. Yet another reason to do a startup.

More photos on Virgin’s site:

http://www.virgin.com/travel/inside-virgin-travel/virgin-gal...

Am I wrong for thinking this is lame for being suborbital? Would orbital designs based on the same principle be feasible?

There's been some confusing communication about SS3 being (or not being) a suborbital design.

Nah, orbital is yet another major leap. Right now it's mainly a gee-whiz dealy.

You aren't wrong, I think the same. I obviously think it is a huge step, and am definitely not saying I could do any better, but I'm more excited for (at the moment) SpaceX to do bigger things to actually get us into a "space age", not just suborbital hops.

Getting 100 miles up is one thing, getting 100 miles up and then also travelling at 18000 mph is another. You need an extra mv^2/2 energy, which is quite a lot.

To get to 160km ~ 100 miles you need about 1.6 MJ/kg.

To travel at 8km/s you need about 32 MJ/kg.

There's your main difference.

> Am I wrong for thinking this is lame for being suborbital?

I think you know as well as anyone that this is a crucial step.

Bronze Age -> Iron Age -> Industrial Age -> Information Age -> Biotech Age -> Space Age ?

I think it's more like:

Land Travel -> Sea Travel -> Air Travel -> Space Travel

And now we're entering an interesting new chapter in the travel industry. Hard to see useful reasons for sub-orbital flights as of yet (other than get from A to B with unique scenery, and "hey, look at how much money I have") but then again, I'm sure much the same was said about air travel in the early days.

Regular docking with an orbital station would make space a lot more accessible, as you could then start using several types of ship to travel - one to get from earth to the station, then another for space, reducing the need for a vehicle to be efficient at both. Larger equipment can be hauled up in parts over multiple runs. Fresh food may even become commonplace in space...

I'd love to peek into the future and see how this develops over the next 20 to 50 years or so. Will it be more like the space-based sci-fi, or more mundane, with space becoming another "offshore" location for work to be outsourced to.

Orbital stations need to move 'sideways' very fast to avoid falling back to earth - the ISS, for example, moves at about 27,000 km/h. You need a huge rocket to get into orbit, quite unlike the Virgin Galactic plane.

-> Time Travel!!!11111

useful -> useless -> stupid

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