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 18:18:34 GMT
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Viewed:
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1104 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek wrote:
> 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.
Well you could try his webpage:
http://www.sp.ph.ic.ac.uk/~balogh/
Hmm, I didn't read as much naysayer out of that as you did. It seems to me like
a realistic assessment of the situation. However I suspect the writing context
of the article is sloppy. I'm pretty sure some of the professor's quotes were
related to the difficulties and economics for orbital flight, which are orders
of magnitude greater than Branson's suborbital scheme - but the article doesn't
really deliniate between the two. Branson probably hasn't helped himself either
by throwing out lines about "orbiting space hotels" etc that are being reported
in the press stories.
I think he's dead on about the safety part of it. We already know suborbital
commercial flight is technically feasible. It's already been done. The big
question is the industry's tolerance for failure. There are a good number of
wealthy risk takers available - for instance people that sign up for a chance to
die climbing Mt. Everest. But I think there is a quite a difference in the
public perception of dying a quiet death on some mountain top far away from the
prying eyes of the world and exploding at Mach5 in front of the cameras. And I
honestly can't see this type of endeavor as being any safer than flying high
performance military aircraft. Accidents will happen. The question is will this
industry be robust enough to weather them?
> 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?
Keep in mind this guy is a space scientist and he did say it would probably be
close enough. When he means weightless he really means weightless. It's my
understanding that "high-quaility" microgravity conditions cannot be obtained in
parabolic atmospheric flight due to factors such as aerodynamic perturbations,
vehicle vibrations, etc. I'd imagine SS1 is probably better than the KC135, but
nowhere near the levels of true weightlessness that scientists typically desire.
Drop towers usually perform better.
Spencer
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