The Dream Is Alive
Last night, I heard that Virgin Galactic will be testing their SpaceShipTwo prototype this year, and expects to start its public, commercial, sub-orbital flights before the end of 2008 (possibly early 2009, depending on which part of their website you’re looking at). They expect to take several hundred people up to 100km (official Astronaut altitude) within the first year of the company’s operation.
Even after the success of SpaceShipOne, the whole thing still seemed a bit pipe-dreamy. “Maybe we can do this as a business one day.” Now, somehow, it seems real, and I hear the sound of Richard Branson buying himself a major turning point in human history. Not that I mean to be too dismissive of the man: it’s a much healthier way to establish a presence in the textbooks than trying to establish a 1000-year Reich, for example.
I cannot help but look at their promotional materials and realize that my dream of going up is about to change from “realistically impossible” to “currently impractical”. Don’t let anyone say that’s not an enormous difference. There was a time in my early 20s when it was “currently impractical” for me to walk unassisted. “Impractical” is a lot easier to change.
Tags: philosophy, space, technology
There are at least six companies attempting to pull this off; VG is the front-runner, but some of the other ones may manage to pull it off, as well.
The real test will be what happens the first time when one of these things manages to have a fatal accident.
One discussion about the above compared to the risk of extreme mountain climbing, and suggested that the risk wasn’t likely a deterrent to most of the target demographic. For instance, according to Wikipedia as of 2004 only 246 people have completed the ascent of K2, with 56 deaths (some on the way down). I’m reasonably sure private suborbital jaunts can be made safer than that.
The question is whether their business plans can survive an accident.
*Fingers crossed*