+1 never shared my space travel dreams (a scary thought since he worked on nuclear rockets for many years, huh??) He's holding out for quantum leaps and stuff like that. He still thinks we'll figure out how to fold space and have instantaneous travel from point a to point b. For now, such space travel remains in the realm of thought experiments. The CERN Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is expected to generate one mini-black hole per second, a potential source of wormholes through which physicists could try to send quantum-sized particles. But sending a person would be another thing. To keep the wormhole open wide enough would take a negative field equivalent to the energy that would be liberated by converting the mass of Jupiter. You know, "beam me up, Scottie."

 

^ I just love it when you talk all technical and scientific like that.

 

Think about what happened today. Burt Rutan and his team has done what no government or company has ever done before: successfully flown a reusable manned space vehicle twice in less than one week. The Space Shuttle reuses only about 40-50% by weight and has a turn-around time measured in months, and is far more dangerous to operate than the vehicle flown today. Admittedly it also has a lot more capability than Spaceship One, but given that this technology is in its infancy I think the future holds a lot of promise.

Spaceship One today also broke a long-standing altitude record previously held by NASA's X-15.

If you have cable tv, check out the 2-hour Discovery Channel special on the Rutan Spaceship One program called Black Skies. It ran last night (Sunday) and will be repeated the afternoon of Sunday 10/10. Discovery will also be showing a follow-on show this Thursday evening, probably detailing today's successful flight.

The 2-hour show is quite revealing. It documents the entire development effort, and shows a lot of behind the scenes camera footage. It also delves into the people that made it happen.

Another interesting aspect it shows is Burt Rutan's vision for the future. The current Spaceship One program is called Tier 1. He also has Tier 2 and Tier 3 programs in the conceptual and design phases. These are to develop a 7 passenger orbital vehicle, and a permanent orbiting space habitat.

Virgin Airways' Sir Richard Branson has signed a contract with Scaled Composites to develop and deliver within 3 years a 5 passenger vehicle using the Spaceship One technology. The current thinking is flights will eventually get into the ~US$200K range or less.

I believe this is the dawn of a new era. Rutan's Spaceship One flights are similar to the Charles Lindbergh flight to Paris. I believe in a very few years we will see regular trips into space by private citizens and commercial entities, with the scheduling and relative safety that the airlines had in the 50s/60s.

I absolutely cannot wait to go!!!

 

Hmmmm -- maybe we can get s2ki discounts!!! We could definitely fill the shuttle with s2kers who want to go, right? Annnnnd we drive street rockets, right???? Jim and I enjoy very much our chit-chat about quantum mechanics and both of us dream of a time when we can find an alternative propellant to the fossil fuels now being used (ie a type of kerosene). I say nucleonics, he thinks the collider project will provide the answers. I hope we live to see both.