Another Giant Leap for Mankind?

[xObserveRx]

I was just reading through the newspaper, when i came across a story titled: "Rocket Man makes history" I read through the article, and became intrigued. I looked up some info the net, and found this site:

http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/

You people need to read this, it's really cool. I hope that this is the start of something much bigger.

What do you guys think? Is this the beginning of a new era of space travel? is it going to lead to bigger things? or is it just another sad attempt?

[talisman]

If I had to choose between going to space and getting a car, I would go to space.

This has to lead to bigger things.

[GuidoHunter]

It may lead to bigger things, but it'll take a while. Private funding for space travel will be slow and won't get too much done. If you really want to contribute to the space program, donate to NASA, not private citizens.

I don't mean to knock what this guy did; it's incredible for a normal US citizen to go into space (albeit not to orbit) solely with private sector funding.

New era of space travel? Nah. Renewed interest of the country in more space missions? Oh yeah, and I think that's a great thing.

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

[ToshX]

What an awkward design, I doubt THAT will become the next generation of space. Theres a chance, but I just really doubt it.

[Jam930]

They're doing it for the X Prize. You get like 10 million dollars if you can fly to space and back twice in a certain amount of time or something.

http://www.xprize.org/

It costed them 20 million though... so they cant just be doing it for the money. But I guess the X Prize helps.

It was in the news paper yesterday.

[COBOL]

The next Giant Leap for mankind is Moogy getting his title and a 3 word vocabulary

[Omeganitros]

Originally Posted by GuidoHunter

New era of space travel? Nah.

Think. The next big think will be tourism. People will come from all over to take a tour plane/shuttle thingy and ride into outer space for a while, enjoying the wonders of nearly 0 gravity.

And then...Space Pirates!

[Jam930]

And then there will be a huge wave of movies about commercial space flights and... ofcourse the villain, master space pirate Krostikrovichinokov the 6th. As the U.S is Russia's old time rival in space.

[Cenright]

It is a race. Tier One is only one of the companies in the race. Some companies are using the vertical rocket, some use a run way like an airplane, some are starting using a piggy-back aircraft, are dropped, and then go from there, and there are many more.

This is where moon colonization starts. They already have the spacestation as a dock.

[evilbutterfly]

Originally Posted by Omeganitros

nearly 0 gravity

actually, the gravity in orbit of Earth is not much less than the gravity on Earth's surface. only thing is that when you are orbitting, u are constantly falling towards Earth, but because u are also moving horizontally and Earth is curved, u never actually get any closer. it's the free falling that makes things seem weightless in space. thats why for Apollo 13 and such they just stuck the actors in jets and flew up then fell so it would look real, because thats the same feeling u'd get if u were in space.

[Jam930]

Oh my God...


The moon is currently in a free fall towards Earth!!!

[Omeganitros]

Dont give me yer space-age technobabble, sonny. Nearly 0 gravity, I say!

[evilbutterfly]

it's nowhere near 0 gravity. if i really felt like it i could go look up the gravity constant and Earth's mass and the distance away a satellite is and find that it's 8 m/s/s instead of the usual 9.8, but i dont feel like all that. just remember, it's the free fall that makes u seem weightless. that's why sky diving is so fun.

and yeah, the moon kinda of is in a free fall towards Earth. but an even more scary thought: Earth is constantly in a free fall towards the Sun. =O

[xObserveRx]

Oh well, what really matters is that hopefully we'll be off of earth by the time it hits the sun, or gets close enough to melt the planet for that matter.

[SlankyDaManky]

wo i wanna go tu space

[evilbutterfly]

If we make a massive move off of Earth it could throw our gravity out of whack, because gravity is determined by an object's mass. Throw gravity out of whack and Earth may go out of orbit. Thus, by getting off of planet we are only quickening Earth inevitable collision with some other celestial body.

Besides, we aren't crashing into the sun any time soon.

[Jam930]

Rofl.

You could take all the land in america and fly it off the planet, and it wouldnt make a difference.

Earth's mass lies under the surface!

[evilbutterfly]

Hey, it wouldn't take much of a shift in gravity to throw things off. It's a delicate balance, ya know, and it's not even perfect as is. The moon is drifting away a little bit, and it would drift more if our pull was a tiny bit less strong.