Subject:
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Re: Virgin Galactic (was Re: Some good news for a change, maybe?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 28 Sep 2004 13:08:25 GMT
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Viewed:
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1201 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek wrote:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek wrote:
> (stuff about SpaceShipOne)
(stuff about Virgin Galactic)
Well, whether Branson is a publicity hound or not, the naysayers have come out:
For example this one:
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13-1443_1595727,00.html
I was quite taken with his "even people like Nasa find it a challenge"...
- It's NASA, not Nasa
- NASA isn't a person, it's an organization
- We've already discussed why NASA fails at cheap space travel
That could be bad transcription on the part of the media flack but it certainly
does make one wonder how much this guy's got going on.
This one is a real gem too:
"You can't have an orbit at that altitude, so you could not be totally
weightless. It would be probably fairly close to it, but it is not an orbit, it
is still within the upper atmosphere."
As it turns out, there are microgravity effects even in high orbit, so he's
technically correct... But what he got wrong at the *fundamental* level is the
notion that being close to weightless requires being in orbit. I was close to
weightless at least 50 times over the course of this summer(1) and it only
required about 50 feet of vertical. Being close to weightless only requires a
ballistic trajectory, and orbit is not the only kind of ballistic trajectory.
Some expert. Why do the media even bother?
I'm sure there are hundreds of other naysayers out there, I just took the first
one I found here: http://news.google.com/?ned=us&topic=t (2)
What I don't get about naysayers in general: Why not just wait and see instead
of sniping? Near as I can tell Branson isn't asking for additional venture
capital, much less government funding. If he wants to blow part of his fortune
on this, let him. Why snipe now?
1 - http://miadventure.com/, http://kennywood.com/, http://dorneypark.com/,
http://cedarpoint.com/
2 - link won't make much sense after today I expect
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