
They paid $100k to ride on Xcor's space plane. Now they want their money back - dsr12
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-xcor-astronauts-20181230-story.html
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propter_hoc
Amazing: they appear to have asserted to clients that 35% of the ticket amount
would be held in escrow by a third party trustee. Meanwhile, the trustee
appears to be stating that the trust agreement doesn't reach this level of
protections. If true, this would elevate the matter from mismanagement into
fraud.

~~~
Aeolun
I’m sure the contract is fairly explicit.

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chrstphrknwtn
How sure?

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Aeolun
Have you ever read a contract where the fine print _didn’t_ protect the
company?

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chrstphrknwtn
Just saying that it's hard to be sure about something you've not read.

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pkaye
> Jones, a commercial pilot who lives in Tulsa, Okla., said scraping together
> the money for the Xcor ticket was a sacrifice.

Honestly these things are very risky engineering efforts for an average person
to invest in. Certainly not with cash up front.

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alangpierce
My impression is it was framed as a regular purchase, not an investment. Xcor
owes them a full refund, and the only reason it won't happen is due to
bankruptcy protections.

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CydeWeys
When I buy a plane ticket, that's a regular purchase, because tens of
thousands of planes exist and millions of people are actually flying on planes
every day.

When you purchase a ticket on a spacecraft that doesn't yet exist, hasn't even
been fully developed yet, and that no one has ever flown on, it's quite a
different situation. I don't think the company lied about any of these facts.
It should have always been clear that there was more risk involved.

And the reason the refund won't happen has little to do with bankruptcy
protections and everything to do with the fact that the company failed. It
turns out what they had tried to do was harder than expected, and they spent
all their money without coming close to the end goal. That money is gone and
won't be coming back, regardless of anything having to do with bankruptcy. As
the saying goes, you can't squeeze blood from a stone. In theory they may be
owed their $100k back, but in practice they'll never get it because it's no
longer there.

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benj111
>And the reason the refund won't happen has little to do with bankruptcy
protections and everything to do with the fact that the company failed.

This to me just sounds like semantics. Is there a point I'm missing?
Bankruptcy is for failed companies, failed companies go bankrupt.

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CydeWeys
The original quote was:

> Xcor owes them a full refund, and the only reason it won't happen is due to
> bankruptcy protections

Implying that, absent bankruptcy protections, the customers would somehow get
their money back. My point was that, even if bankruptcy protections didn't
exist, and those debts couldn't be discharged, the customers are still never
getting their money back because it was spent on R&D and the company itself is
now valueless.

~~~
benj111
Ah ok, that makes sense :)

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b_b
To clarify any misunderstandings from the title, the people paid but never
actually got to fly, so they (fairly) want their money back.

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megaremote
Worth mentioning Xcor has gone bankrupt, and why they might have trouble
getting their money.

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JKCalhoun
Yes, that. And there was _always_ that possibility. I would have hoped someone
with $100K to drop would have known better — bankruptcy protection laws didn't
just come about in the past few years.

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CydeWeys
They've gone bankrupt in the old school, pre-modern-bankruptcy-law sense of
the word, i.e. they've spent all their money and have none left. Bankruptcy
protection laws aren't changing this outcome either way.

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onetimemanytime
>> _Jones, a commercial pilot who lives in Tulsa, Okla., said scraping
together the money for the Xcor ticket was a sacrifice. “I live in an
apartment. I don’t drive the newest car,” he said. “That’s a lot of money.
You’re talking kids’ college or buying a house.”_

That makes you a.......

It's his money and he should have gotten the ride, but then Chapter 7 is part
of life for everyone included. If he tried to get some sympathy on the
"scraping together the money" angle he gets none from me. $100K ticket to
space when you have to borrow, move money left and right etc is not prudent.

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neonate
[https://outline.com/7tuEXp](https://outline.com/7tuEXp)

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fit2rule
If I had #200k to spend on a space flight, I'd put it in SpaceX. Give me a
good suit, a couple of orbits and a way to land on the other side of the
world, and back, and I'm in. I'd also entertain 'economy' re-entry vehicle
options, for the hoots (as long as the suits good..)

Well, as soon as have a spare $200k to take a rocket flight vacation, that is
..

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ratsimihah
There's no such thing as a way back. It's a one way trip!

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fit2rule
I'd take it like this: a rocket (doesn't have to be a big one) ride from
London to Tahiti, land through whatever sporty means might be a delicious
option, take off again from Tahiti, rocket around the globe a couple times for
fun, then land back in dreary old London for business.

Gimme a good suit, and I'll land myself. ;)

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drfuchs
Nothing new. Pan Am sold tickets for their first flight to the moon for
$10,000 decades ago. Everyone who bought one lost out completely when they
went bankrupt.

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blatherard
As far as I can tell, no such tickets were ever sold [1]. There was a "First
Moon Flights" Club that they ran that had about 100K members, but that was
free.

[1] [https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/9656/how-much-
di...](https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/9656/how-much-did-pan-am-
tickets-to-the-moon-cost)

~~~
drfuchs
Well, I stand corrected. Coverage in the January 9, 1969 New York Times (page
94), and the July 21, 1969 issue (page 52), does indicate that nobody paid to
get on the waiting list at Pan Am and TWA, but the estimated one-way(!) fare
would be $14,000 in 1969 dollars (based on a then-current 6-cents-per-mile
cost for airline travel). Interesting that both these airlines failed, and
both were particularly oriented toward international travel.

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theothermkn
> "..., there’s got to be a future in suborbital space,” Bennis said. “I want
> it to come in my lifetime.”

But, why? What possible benefit is there from a suborbital vomit ride? They're
probably not even high enough to get the overview effect.

This is going to be the day of downvotes for me, but I can't see what good
comes from strapping people in to a vehicle that gets less than 3% of the
energy needed to get to orbit for a ticket price of $100k. None of the
technical problems you'd have to solve would advance real spaceflight. It
cannot be the space frontier dream of humankind to lob themselves briefly to 8
times the altitude of an airliner and then flop back down.

I'd have been embarrassed to have gone on that trip for that price, to the
point that I'd have turned down a free ticket for fear of having given the
impression that I'd paid.

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CydeWeys
And yet they found over 200 people willing to pony up the money to do it. I
agree with you in that I personally don't think it's worth it, but evidently
others do.

Hell, people spend hundreds of millions of dollars on artwork -- I'd be much
more inclined to do a $100k suborbital flight over that, and it's a drop in
the bucket to those people too.

~~~
riantogo
Artwork is not a good comparison here because those are tangible investments
which appreciates in value. There is a market for art. If you bought one for a
million you are going to likely sell for more than that.

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CydeWeys
Insert other outrageously expensive good or service that is non-appreciating,
then. Like yachts.

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ModernMech
> 38 miles above the Earth ... high enough that passengers would feel 90
> seconds of weightlessness.

What does this even mean? As I'm sure we all know here, there is in fact
gravity in space near the Earth. Astronauts on the space station experience
0.89g at 200 miles altitude. You get a feeling of weightlessness by masking
gravity with inertial forces, not by being far from Earth (I mean, being far
from Earth would do it, but you have to be really, really far. Certainly
further than $100k is going to get you). If you just want to experience
weightlessness you don't have to go far from Earth at all. Just take a trip on
the vomit comet for $5k.

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teraflop
Your point is taken, but I think you're being overly pedantic.

A parabolic arc with a larger height enables a longer period of
weightlessness. You're welcome to debate whether it's good value for money,
but the article's statement isn't wrong -- Xcor's spacecraft can (EDIT:
theoretically) provide 90 seconds of weightlessness _because of_ the height to
which it travels. You can't replicate the same experience on the vomit comet;
its service ceiling and maximum speed aren't high enough.

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dehrmann
Does Vomit Comet "weightlessness" feel the same a zero-g weightlessness? In
the Vomit Comet, sure you're floating around, but you're really just free
falling.

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ars
> as zero-g weightlessness

No Human has ever experienced zero-g weightlessness, and none ever will. There
is no part of the universe that is zero g. Gravity on the ISS is almost the
same as gravity on Earth (90% of it). Even distant planets experience the
gravity of the sun, and the collective gravity of the milky way.

Instead what you have is free fall - that's basically what orbit is, you are
falling toward the planet, but moving forward fast enough to keep missing. It
sounds like a joke when phrased that way, but it really is what's happening.

Do you wonder what it feels like to float in the space station? It feels like
falling. Just constant falling without ever hitting anything. It does NOT feel
like floating or flying. I assume the brain eventually gets used to the
feeling, but not in 90 seconds.

If you want to experience something at least kinda close to it, go sky diving,
which feels like falling with something pressing on whatever part of you is
pointed into the wind.

If you want to experience floating, go scuba diving.

If you want to experience flying, go to a sky diving simulator (vertical wind
tunnel).

