
Virgin Galactic unveils commercial spaceship  - prakash
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_space_tourism
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jodrellblank
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?

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

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robin_reala
More photos on Virgin’s site:

[http://www.virgin.com/travel/inside-virgin-travel/virgin-
gal...](http://www.virgin.com/travel/inside-virgin-travel/virgin-galactic-
unveils-spaceshiptwo-1/)

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

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RiderOfGiraffes
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.

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

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knv
I think it's more like:

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

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jurjenh
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.

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Luc
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.

