Re:Virgin Galactic successfully reaches space
by xoa on Thursday December 13, 2018 @02:00PM
(#18675004)
Thanks for the reply, that was my rough impression from eyeballing it but the article certainly talks quite optimistically and I'm not at all an expert.
>The biggest change I saw was they floated the possibility of actually traveling this way- e.g. London to New Mexico or somewhere
Yeah, that definitely seems like a wild thing thrown out, particularly given research like the X-59 QueSST NASA is doing [1]. I can't see them possibly competing successfully with an air breathing supersonic aircraft capable of legal overland flight in terrestrial transport, so there's a squeeze from the bottom. And even from a joyride and "I've gone to space!" angle it doesn't feel that compelling vs actually going into orbit for a similar price (or less!). So it seems like a dead end, albeit a cool one, but also a significant amount of money just for that given the context of the times.
>The biggest change I saw was they floated the possibility of actually traveling this way- e.g. London to New Mexico or somewhere
Yeah, that definitely seems like a wild thing thrown out, particularly given research like the X-59 QueSST NASA is doing [1]. I can't see them possibly competing successfully with an air breathing supersonic aircraft capable of legal overland flight in terrestrial transport, so there's a squeeze from the bottom. And even from a joyride and "I've gone to space!" angle it doesn't feel that compelling vs actually going into orbit for a similar price (or less!). So it seems like a dead end, albeit a cool one, but also a significant amount of money just for that given the context of the times.
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1: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/lowboom/index.html