Virgin Galactic Crash

Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by mba2012, Oct 31, 2014.

  1. Not as if Space Tourism ever was going to be successful...

    I mean, the prices are just horrendous for the average person.
  2. Unfortunate, but such is the risk with this kind of thing. There was a time in our not-too-distant past when powered flight was an impossible dream. Our quests to refine and master the jet engine, to break the speed of sound, and to put men on the moon - all had their pitfalls, shortcomings, and share of tragedy.

    The important thing is not to be deterred by adversity, but to overcome it.
  3. Space tourism was most certainly going to be sucessful, whether this happened or not.

    As Kephras said, everything has had its share of tragedy. Someone was saying that there will never be such a thing as routine, safe travel into space. If there is any company that will persevere and continue to try, it will be Virgin. Their first commercial flight will definitely not be next year, and I'd probably be surprised if they were flying paying passengers by the end of the decade. But if someone doesn't do it, no one will. They will not start flying until it is as safe as it could possibly be.
  4. Yes, but it won't be package-holiday successful or anything like that.
  5. I'd say it will be, eventually. I doubt people in back in 1903 could have imaged how successful air travel is today.
    607 and fishmeal like this.
  6. Yes, but I can't imagine spaceports with passenger numbers the size of the busiest airports today being around for a while.
  7. 250,000 dollars per ticket is outrageous, but it makes sense. The flights would only be for the wealthy that want to orbit.
  8. Step 1: Making the technology
    Step 2: Making it affordable.

    In 1946, the ENIAC mainframe was announced complete, and cost approximately $500,000 - around $6,000,000 by today's standards. The first programmable computer, it weighed several tons and took up an entire room.
    Today, we carry more computational power around in our wristwatches.

    I was born in 1983. Mobile phones back then weighed in pounds and took a set of D-batteries to power.

    Thirty years later, we surf the internet from a sliver of plastic a few sizes larger than a credit card.

    What you can't imagine today may become reality tomorrow.
  9. Well, as Kephras (again :p) said above, the price will eventually reach easily affordable standards. The industry has to begin somewhere and space is a very expensive and volatile industry to work in. In 30 years, it's likely that you will be able to purchase tickets for just a few thousand dollars and not a few hundred thousand. BTW, SpaceShipTwo was never designed to get into orbit, and with the new type of fuel being tested, it technically would not have even reached space, which is 100km above mean sea level and would have instead only reached 80km above sea level.

    Also, some updates for those of you who have not been following what has been happening. Investigators arrived on Saturday morning and have located most of the wreckage. Apparently the fuel systems were found fully intact, so they likely didn't explode like the media have thought. Although it's probably too early to speculate, the NTSB have said that the 'feathering' device which is meant to slow the craft down during descent was activated early by either the pilot, or some other mechanical failure. So this means the accident was likely caused by a structural/aerodynamic failure and not an rocket failure.