Vacation Destination??Follow

By 2014 you should be able to take a site-seeing adventure to the edge of space (65miles above the ground).



If you sign on with XCOR you'll travel in this Lynx Suborbital Spacecraft:


How much would you pay to travel to the edge of space?

I am not adventurous enough to do this so I wouldn't pay for it. I hate flying and something about doing it even higher in the air does nothing for me.

I'm guessing the 200k price tag does not include an alcoholic beverage.

I'd go in a heartbeat, but 200k is not even really a sum I could hope to save up at this point. The prices will come down though I'm sure. Maybe for my 60th b-day I will request a ticket to space.

Supposedly, moon excursions will also be available within the decade by the price for that venture is looking to start at around 2mil.

Edited, Oct 21st 2010 4:50pm by Elinda

For one thing, I would love to go to space. I don't know how I feel about this whole space tourism, though. We always have to make a mark anywhere there's sand, don't we?

Not only that, but it might help keep those sorts of things from happening. If people will pay enough money to see pretty space vistas, the the companies making the money will want to keep those vistas pretty.

Which it won't be.

I think shipping from the moon might be a bit expensive

I would love dearly to get into space. I'm not sure I'd trust a burt Rutan ride. The guy is a genius, and has some stunning aircraft, I'll give him that, but he cuts wayyyyyyy down on his structural integrity margins in some of his designs. For example, The Long EZ. I'm pretty sure John Denver would agree with me on that point. That being said, the guy has the right idea. A Single stage to orbit device is possible given current technology, a single stage to orbit device that can laaunch and more importantly recover a meaningful levle of payload isn't. Even venturestar's fuel capacity was going to limit its payload without some sort of SSRB attachment .A Two stage to orbit cargo shuttle is what we really need at the moment until we can get a space elevator built or a powerful enough maglev facility.

Heavy lift unpiloted rockets are critical, need to be developed, and are as important as a shuttle replacement, but a large, mobile, stable platform with a manipulator arm is a required facet of any effective space presence policy, and a ******* capsuledoes NOT meet that requirement under any circumstances.

Also, mega rateups for airplane picture!

Yeah, getting sh*t to Earth is theoretically quite easy. The moon's gravity well is very weak.

Edited, Oct 22nd 2010 3:08am by Kavekk

Apparently, at least according to some scientists, commercial space travel will contribute measurably to climate change.

So, this is quite the pickle. It's possible that our lack of stewardship could cause our planet to become inhospitable to human life well before the half dozen or so billion years we had currently counted on til the Sun dwarfs out on us. So, we could continue our search of the cosmos for another suitable home for us **** sapiens. But that means lots of space travel, lots of R&D, etc etc.....these activities may contribute significantly to our doomsday demise. Hmmpf.

It's quite possible that 'greener' spaceships can be produced, but still if we enter space on a commercial basis...we will change it.

I don't think we can keep people down. "To infinity and beyond!!!"

I dunno, will we still have that technology after the apocalypse in 2012?

If I'm going to fly, I'll head south, to Nassau, not just further up.