A long piece on personal space travel, over at New York Magazine. I found this interesting:
Wincer is frequently asked if customers can bring children. Several parents have attempted to give flights as sweet-sixteen birthday gifts; one customer, she said, “at the moment is desperate to let her 12-year-old fly.” The FAA had yet to address such questions, and Wincer sees it as a matter of informed consent, of which she thinks a 12-year-old is not capable. Many customers have their own private pilot’s license, and many others are scared of flying or small spaces. She had just read a profile of one client who is terrified of roller coasters: “Jesus,” she said.
One of those things is not like the other. I’m not much of a fan of roller coasters, but that wouldn’t affect my desire for (or enjoyment of) a parabolic flight at all. I’m also acrophobic, but I have no problem with flying. Being high on a structure is a completely different experience than flight, at least for me.
Of course, this isn’t really true, or at least it’s quite misleading:
The primary goal of the shuttle program was simple: to create a reusable space vehicle that could transport materials to and from the International Space Station.
There was no “International Space Station” when the Shuttle was being developed, and wouldn’t be until 1993, though it was meant to be a precursor program to some sort of space station, which was undefined at the time. Of course, ironically, the fact that they built into it the capability to be a short-term space station probably reduced the incentive to actually build one, which is why the first bit of hardware for ISS wasn’t launched until almost twenty years after the Shuttle started flying.
Following engine burnout, its momentum will continue its acceleration
Uh huh.
For people that don’t know this is going on, this long article may clue them in, but I’m struck by how slow, plodding and short of real ambition is represented. The naysayers have had great fun with Elon because ambitious defines him along with actual execution. I don’t think we’ve seen anything yet from SpaceX which will allow others to go even farther.
Elon seems to use the concept of ‘forcing function” quite a lot.
“Once we’ve got a large base on Mars, and a lot of travel between the planets, that’s a great forcing function for the improvement of space transport technology. I think we’ll see rapid improvement and all sorts of inventions that we just can’t envision today.”
65 yo ladies spending their life savings in one day may be inspirational but does not include that forcing function that will make us a space faring species. War is an example of a forcing function.
Perhaps I have no credibility, but Elon is just saying what I’ve said, but with a new cliche. “It’s not a given that things improve. There has to be a forcing function.”
That forcing function doesn’t always have to be grand. It could at times just be a person following through on a vision.
I’m baffled at how so many space advocates, such as yourself, have failed to learn the basic reasoning behind companies like XCOR and Virgin Galactic. Here’s the fundamental concepts you seems to be missing:
1) Fully and rapidly reusable launch vehicles (RLVs) will lower the cost of access to space and start a revolution in the way we see the world.
2) High frequency access is just as important as low cost, and we’re not just talking about low $/kg here, we’re talking about $200 to get an experiment into space – currently it’s about $80k.
3) We don’t yet know how to build and operate RLVs, we have to learn, and the only way to learn is to start flying.
4) Not everyone is a millionaire with a flare for turning vague business plans into winners. If you have to start from the money you have on your credit cards, you need to get to paying customers as soon as possible, which means you may have to work on things you’re only peripherally interested in.
5) If you’re interested in flying people, the only way to learn how is to fly people. “Suborbital space tourism” is a market that will teach you how to keep people alive, how to turn a vehicle around quickly, and prime the pump for significant orbital tourism to follow. There’s also the scientific payloads.
You don’t have to accept these concepts, but you should at least understand the motivation of the people who are doing.
Don’t be so baffled. I’m all for them, but I think they are too indirect.
The problem is of course, that not everybody has the money to do what needs be done. That includes billionaires. But Elon’s forcing function isn’t about billionaires. It’s all about the incremental things we can do once someone has shown the way.
Operating a space transportation company, delivering people and cargo from orbit to orbit, is easier than what suborbital companies are trying to do once you have a ship in orbit. But it’s not just about that either.
Figuring out all the little products that people living off the earth need and want is going to happen a lot faster once people are living off the earth (govt. employees count very little toward this. They don’t complain enough.)
I absolutely do believe in learn by doing. Paralysis by analysis is a well known fact. But not all paths get you from here to there.
Disagree with Elon if you like, but I believe the history of human nature is strongly on his side. If you don’t believe Elon, believe in his results.
How are all those people going to live off Earth when none of them can afford a ticket into space? Isn’t getting into space a prerequisite for living there?
Since you regard Elon Musk as infallible, please answer this question — why didn’t he get the contract to build the Crew Exploration Vehicle and its launch system?
That is surely what Musk was expecting in 2003 when he met with Sean O’Keefe and persuaded him to retire the Shuttle and replace it with capsules and expendable rockets, so NASA could go to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. (SpaceX was already working on conceptual designs for the Dragon capsule at that time.)
So, why didn’t that happen, if Musk never makes mistakes? How did SpaceX get shut out of the bidding, on a program that was his idea, if Musk is infallible?
The results are not at all what Musk expected in 2003. He wanted to be the primary player in the Bush Vision of Space Exploration, not relegated to the side role of providing transportation to the International Space Station which he cares little about.
If he could miscalculate so badly back in 2003, why do you assume it is impossible for him to make mistakes in the future?
Have you ever heard the old adage about putting all your eggs in one basket?
I’m also acrophobic, but I have no problem with flying. Being high on a structure is a completely different experience than flight, at least for me.
Ditto. I’m scared of heights in buildings or on mountains, but had no problem sitting in an armchair under a hang-glider at 2,000 feet, flying an ultralight.
Actually, I don’t even mind mountains, as long as it’s not with ropes. Hiking them or driving in them is no problem for me.
I think it has to do with natural versus structure. I don’t mind standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon, but there’s not enough money in the world to get me out on that cantilevered glass bridge above it.
Yeah, I thought about the glass bridge on my last trip to Vegas, but… I don’t think so :).
Of course then Obama turned up and they cancelled tourist flights to the Grand Canyon anyway.
In my younger days I used to skydive with a fellow who could not ascend a step ladder without quaking at the knees. Yet he had no problems (other than the normal jitters) jumping out of airplanes. People thought that was odd, but it seems quite common for folks like yourself to have what I think of as “situational” fear of heights.
Parachute wont save your hip from a fall off a step ladder.
I used to skydive – as preparation for aerobatic flying (I had read several articles written by acro pilots who had to leave a disintegrating plane but hesitated because jumping was fearsomely new to them. I eliminated that cause of hesitation in myself).
I had no problems sitting on the edge of the open door with my feet hanging out over the edge.
I used to crew tallships (the late HMS Bounty, HMS Rose, Schooner Ernestina, USB Niagara) and I had no problems climbing the rigging and working out on the yards (after the first ascent – I think my fingerprints are still on the backside of the HMS Rose shrouds from that first ascent).
But ladders are fearsome things to me. I use them but I’m extra cautious. I tie them down so that they won’t fall backwards or slide off to the side, or the bottom won’t slide out from under. When working on the roof of the house I MUST have the ladder extend past the roof so that I can get on the ladder without bending over.
Tall buildings are scary too.
I think it has to do with backups and how they make me feel better. There’s no backup system in the world that’s going to help me if the ladder I’m on slides off to the side. But my parachute is a good backup if my airplane folds like an old kite. There’s no backup if I fall off the edge of a tall building.
My safety harness is a good backup in case I fell off the ship’s rigging, and the ratlines/shrouds that you climb to go aloft are well anchored at top and bottom. There are rules about climbing those things that you had better know and follow but the control of that is in your hands.
So in the end I think it comes down to control. I never heard of that glass bridge but once out in the center of it you have no control nor any backup. That would scare me.
People tend to forget that the Shuttle was a launcher, and its original goal was to replace all US launch capability. Which it did, for a time. Until people realized that the Shuttle was not actually a very good launcher, in any respect. It’s interesting how things have changed so much about the perception of the Shuttle program.
The Shuttle never completely replace all of our expendable boosters but that wasn’t for lack of trying on NASA’s part. The DoD continued to launch Delta, Titan and Atlas boosters (along with the occasional Scout) both before and after Challenger. I vividly remember a period of a bit more than 6 months where the US had a string of launch failures.
Fall 1985 – Titan 34 out of Vandenberg with a very expensive NRO payload
Early 1986: Challenger, followed by a Delta II and Atlas failure. IIRC, the Delta was carrying a weather satellite and the Atlas had a Fleetsat UHF comsat. Not long afterwards, we lost another Titan 34 out of Vandenberg. For a time, the only booster we had that wasn’t grounded was the Scout.
I’m also acrophobic, but I have no problem with flying.
So is Dick Rutan.
I Say I’m “affraid of heights.” But I used to climb rocks, rapel quite often, even fall a fair distance and suffer injury, but I kept climbing. I have no problem in a plane, no problem in an enclosed structure standing at a massive height, like the top of sears tower, or the space needle or other places, and I realized that my “acrophobia” was more “agoraphobia.” If I can put my hand on something to insure that I have something solid that I can trust, then I am fearless. Put me on a spire staring over an open desert hundreds of feet beneath me with no reference, I shake.
I’m not afraid of heights, or even falling. That sudden stop at the end, on the other hand…
As they teach in the military, you eventually learn to trust your gear.
You might as well…it’s all you have.
I’ve never had a problem with flying (admittedly all but once it’s been on commercial craft) or standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, or walking out over the bridge – loop there. The notion of walking out of a perfectly good airplane and depending on a ‘chute opening scares me. But note the proviso “perfectly good;” if the only option on the plane were near-certain death, I’d gladly step out the door with a ‘chute.
On the mixed up history of the “New York” writer, it just shows what’s always been true, that if you didn’t live through the events, and/or weren’t following them at the time, there are going to be misinterpretations as you write about them and try to impose some coherent storyline. Accurate or not, well informed or not, we all try to create those.
So people can keep on writing histories of past times over and over, and once no one is living who was there, there is always room for another version.
The whole generational thing about knowledge that is a given for one but not for the next just sometimes hits you in the face, even if you know it intellectually. Just yesterday I mentioned the name Barry Goldwater to the college grad who works at the local coffee shop.
“Who?”… he’d never even heard the name.
What blows my mind is the talking head newscaster that have the same reaction to info I always thought of as general knowledge.
Hell, i get the heebie jeebies just looking at those old photos of workers 20 stories up walking around on steel I-beam girders with no harness. Especially the ones with the guy standing on a board hanging off the side.