As long as it doesnāt start playing any music from Eros weāre probably safe.
Seems like this one was an unambiguous success:
The Canadarm takes a hit.
Hereās a great comparison between the suborbital tourist spaceships, for those who only want the history and engineering backgrounds rather than all the bullshit billionaire space race hype.
Itās time to review the recent suborbital tourist flights!
Iām going to put aside the bullshit billionaire space races hype, and just concentrate on answering this question: āIf someone gave me a free ticket for a trip on either SpaceShipTwo or New Shepard, which trip would I pick?ā
So money is no object, and Iām going to assume safety isnāt an issue either.
Before these highly publicised flights, I assumed Iād prefer New Shepard. It seems like more of a classic space launch experience. You walk across a gantry, strap into a seat in a capsule, and feel the power of a rocket under your ass. It flies higher, above the 100km line. Then it lands under a parachute, which I think is super cool.
But then, watching the footage from inside the New Shepard capsule, I noticed a few things. First, there isnāt much space. The massive emergency abort rocket is right in the middle of the capsule! Everyone was bumping into it! Second, the windows might be big windows, but they face OUT and not DOWN. Sure, the capsule is a long way up, but the main view is sideways across the top of the atmosphere, not looking down at where youāve come from, nor are you able to look down and see where you might land.
It seems that Wally Funk, long time aspiring astronaut, had similar issues: Not enough time in zero G, not an amazing view, overall mission too short, and too cramped to be really fun.
The experience is obviously exciting and interesting, but now, to me, it feels like itās trying to capture the feeling of true space flight, and falling short.
On the other hand, before these competing flights, I assumed SpaceShipTwo wasnāt a classic space flight experience, because all it did is match a mission profile of the X-15, the experimental rocket powered plane from the 1960ās.
Now I realise that matching a mission profile of the FASTEST and HIGHEST FLYING plane in history is FUCKING COOL. Like the x-15, SpaceShipTwo is slung under a carrier aircraft. Itās dropped from the mother ship, then lights its rocket, pulls back and flies up into āspaceā. It then does something unique, which is flip over backwards, then it falls belly-down until itās slow enough, then glides down to the runway and lands like the X-15 on wheels/skids.
But on top of the X-15-style mission, youāre allowed to get out of your seat and no the zero-G nonsense. And unlike the New Shepard, there seems to be plenty of room to do the flips and tumbles. Thereās an entire open section behind the rear seats reserved just for zero-G antics.
You also get a way cooler view. The ship flips over, so the ceiling windows are now pointing directly down at the ground. And weirdly, Iām much more attracted to the round porthole-looking windows of SpaceShipTwo over the fairground-ride-looking windows of New Shepard.
And as another bonus, the fact that SpaceShipTwo is piloted by humans makes the entire trip feel more badass. They are up in the cockpit, with cool helmets and visors and shit. The autonomous systems of the New Shepard are probably safer, but do you want to be a payload in a mindless capsule, or do you want to go flying with these guys?
So my conclusion is clear. As a suborbital space flight tourist, I donāt want a watered down version of what the first part of a rocket launch into space might feel like. Instead, I want a similar experience to some of the coolest space place missions of the 60ās, but now packaged in a safe and accessible way, with extra bonuses like zero-G flippy time and cool views.
Sign me up for SpaceShipTwo!
Or, alternatively, let the hypothetical ticket be valid for a Inspiration4-style trip in a Crew Dragon.
Well, I definitely know which one Iād prefer to have a beer with after.
Steel chimney with a dolphin on top.
Really good Kurzgesagt:
This is the coolest shit:
The next thing that can top this is a robot launch tower the size of a skyscraper catching rockets out of the air. And thatās what SpaceX is up to next.
Which will happen first, JWST launch or Tale of Genji episode?
The Woz wants to join Musk.
Iām a big fan of space and rocket technology, hell I spend a lot of my time building amateur rockets in my basement and driving to the middle of the desert to launch them with fellow rocket geeks. But the world is in no need of more rich people starting space companies! Holy hell guys, try something else to make a name for yourself or be involved with an exciting endeavor that may or may not make you more rich and/or grant you public notoriety. No imagination from these dudes, they should hire someone to brainstorm some thrilling companies they could start that would get peopleās attention more than the 48th private space company all working on slight variants of the same technology.