Nasa is their client. In fact a big reason why SpaceX still exists.
Space Race
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- Start date
I liked that film
To be fair Alien and other sci-fi called it when they said corporations would be doing this stuff not nations. Everybody will still be doing sh*t jobs and the Earth is frying but hey, some billionaires are going into space.
They are one of their clients, but I'm not sure why that negates anything I said? They provide a service which exceeds the others in pace, price and equals in reliability. I think the biggest issue has been the last 40 years where the state owned space agencies had no pressure to push each other and they now have a commercially based competitor.
It's a good thing though as the likes of the EU and NASA are looking at their space programs and trying to see how quickly they can bring reusable rockets into play.
It doesn't negate what you say. My point is that NASA outsourced LEO activities to SpaceX, they are not direct competitors, sorry if you didn't mean that. I agree that SpaceX has proved that space can be cheaper and quicker when privatised.
Yep, and regularly flying spy satellites and other such things into space.Is star trek...
Sorry space force still a thing now trumps gone?
Sorry, yeah I misunderstood. The best case scenario is NASA and SpaceX working together, which hopefully is beginning to happen.
Branson can suck a fat one. Used the government to bail out Virgin Atlantic and then flies off to the moon, get fecked.
One hopes that being a lesser rich person he has saved money wherever he can on the project, buying the
Does commercial spaceflight fall under similar regulatory and crash investigation bodies such as commercial flights yet btw?
Yes, the FAA regulates it in the US and has for a long time. Bezos & Co aren't doing anything different to somebody like ULA who have been launching rockets for decades.
https://www.independent.co.uk/space/richard-branson-space-virgin-galactic-b1882013.html
Branston setting off about 2ish BST
Livestream on Youtube.
Branston setting off about 2ish BST
Livestream on Youtube.
It's been pushed back to 7.30pm now.
Typical.
NY Times says pushed back by an hour and a half and livestream saying it starts in three hours.
Probably end up having to get there via a replacement bus service.
Reduse , Recycle , Reuse to save the planet while some ginger tosser goes joyriding in his feckin spaceship. There is no hope.
Be safe Chewbacca.
Payback for all those fecking Virgin train delays we’ve all suffered.
My money is on leaves on the launch pad.
At least if he enters a wormhole and ends up time travelling he will blend in with Galen and Urko, they might even think he is Dr Zaius.
People like to poo on the billionaires investing in space technology as a play thing for the super rich, which Earth suffers and slowly boils. And that's true. But it's also very wrong.
There are loads of really, really, really, really important reasons that we need to invest in space, and do it now. I'd like to present a few that I can think of off the top of my head.
1. Mitigating the damage from Coronal Mass Ejections
A coronal mass ejection (CME) is a significant release of plasma and accompanying magnetic field from the solar corona. They often follow solar flares and are normally present during a solar prominence eruption. Coronal mass ejections can disrupt radio transmissions and cause damage to satellites and electrical transmission line facilities, resulting in potentially massive and long-lasting power outages. The largest recorded geomagnetic perturbation, resulting presumably from a CME hitting the Earth's magnetosphere, was the solar storm of 1859 (the Carrington Event), which took down parts of the recently created US telegraph network, starting fires and shocking some telegraph operators.
If a "Carrington Event" happened today, some have said it would be a "Multi-Trillion Dollar Disaster". It's hard to say what the precise damage would be, and hard to say whether we could see a CME much worse than Carrington. The idea of planes falling from the sky, self driving cars going haywire, nuclear power plants going into melt-down and power-outages across entire continents are speculation, but they're not beyond the realms of possibility.
Maybe it will occur in 10 years, maybe in 100 years. Or maybe it will happen tomorrow. Humans are very very very bad at preparing for "unlikely" events (COVID being a prime example.) But something that has the capability of creating continent wide 9-11 events needs to be taken seriously.
How can space infrastructure prevent this?
CMEs travel fast, but slower than the speed of light. Currently our best "early warning method" is from our probes at the L1 Lagrange point, which sits directly between the Earth and the Sun. Unfortunately, by the time the L1 probes would detect these CMEs, they are already 99% of the way here. A much better method would be to use a statite (or quasite) probe which sits much closer to the sun, and uses the force of the sunlight to maintain a slower orbit directly between Earth and our star. This would give us a much better early warning system.
The only caveat to this is that, we could mitigate these dangers by improving our infrastructure here on Earth and preparing for these events.
2. The search for intelligent life beyond Earth.
Aliens.
No, seriously, aliens.
Talking about Aliens is always going to get people rolling their eyes, but life exists here. Life exists on Earth, and it existed pretty much as soon as the conditions were suitable for it to exist. In the billion years since then, it took a long time for an intelligent technological species to exist. But what about elsewhere? Are we the only critical thinkers anywhere in the universe? The FERMI paradox is a thought experiment that asks, where is everyone? But without investigation, it maybe that we're alone or it maybe that we're not.
So far we've had received a few signals that could be from alien civilisations. The "WOW" signal, and more recently a signal still being analysed by a private organisation. But frustratingly, no one really knows if these signals were from alien civilisations or just from a rogue satellite (or another man-made signal).
What we need is a to put detectors and telescopes in the quietest area of our solar system; the "Dark side of the moon" (more correctly, the far side of the moon)
The "dark side of the moon" isn't actually dark (well, aside from the 14 days per 28 day cycle that it is dark) but it is permanently facing away from the Earth. Man-mad signals, whether from Earth-satellites or ground based, won't reach there meaning we can far more easily detect SETI signals. (Although watch out for the increasingly common man-made Lunar satellites).
Also, the far side of the moon, during Lunar night, will likely be the darkest area of our solar system. We should be building telescopes there to investigate the original of our universe.
https://www.space.com/nasa-telescope-far-side-of-moon.html
https://www.wired.com/story/alien-hunters-need-far-side-moon-to-stay-quiet/
3. The search for non-intelligent life beyond Earth.
As previously mentioned, Life on Earth appeared pretty much right away when Earth was "ready" for it. Mars however, was likely "ready" for it, far sooner than Earth was, with warm liquid water and an atmosphere.
Did life exist on Mars before it did on Earth? Did Earth life originate from Mars? Did it exist separately? Does it still exist there now?
What about life on Venus? Specifically in the upper atmosphere.
What about life on Europa? Or Enceladus?
Finding life on other planets, even former life, would have a profound impact on us here. We might not be holding hands and singing songs together overnight, but it could have a massive impact on politics worldwide.
Probably, the only way we're ever going to know if life exists in our solar system is to go there. By sending humans.
4. Gamma Ray Bursts.
Gamma ray bursts are caused either by the explosion of a giant star, or the merging of two neutron stars, and are speculated to have already caused an extinction event on earth. GRBs are a candidate explanation as to why aliens don't exist everywhere.
One of my favourite shows on Netflix is "Into the night" a Belgium show about a "Solar event" that suddenly starts killing all life on the side of the Earth that sunlight reaches. It's a great show, and I'd seriously recommend watching it. I like to pretend it's not our Sun killing everything in the show, but a star that happens to be nearly in-line with our star. Either way, it shows the disastrous consequences of such an event, although it doesn't deal with GRBs destroying our Ozone layer and changing the chemistry in our atmosphere (maybe that will be in Season 2?)
It's unlikely that a GRBs event would happen in our life time, but we need to know about the true likelihood of these events.
5. Meteors.
A big one killed the dinosaurs. Smaller ones likely have caused many a megatsunami (although these seem to be more often caused by volcanic activity and land-slides) . A big meteor will strike earth at some point if we don't do anything to stop it.
There are loads of reasons to invest in Space. Humans are bad at preparing for unlikely but catastrophic events.
There are loads of really, really, really, really important reasons that we need to invest in space, and do it now. I'd like to present a few that I can think of off the top of my head.
1. Mitigating the damage from Coronal Mass Ejections
A coronal mass ejection (CME) is a significant release of plasma and accompanying magnetic field from the solar corona. They often follow solar flares and are normally present during a solar prominence eruption. Coronal mass ejections can disrupt radio transmissions and cause damage to satellites and electrical transmission line facilities, resulting in potentially massive and long-lasting power outages. The largest recorded geomagnetic perturbation, resulting presumably from a CME hitting the Earth's magnetosphere, was the solar storm of 1859 (the Carrington Event), which took down parts of the recently created US telegraph network, starting fires and shocking some telegraph operators.
If a "Carrington Event" happened today, some have said it would be a "Multi-Trillion Dollar Disaster". It's hard to say what the precise damage would be, and hard to say whether we could see a CME much worse than Carrington. The idea of planes falling from the sky, self driving cars going haywire, nuclear power plants going into melt-down and power-outages across entire continents are speculation, but they're not beyond the realms of possibility.
Maybe it will occur in 10 years, maybe in 100 years. Or maybe it will happen tomorrow. Humans are very very very bad at preparing for "unlikely" events (COVID being a prime example.) But something that has the capability of creating continent wide 9-11 events needs to be taken seriously.
How can space infrastructure prevent this?
CMEs travel fast, but slower than the speed of light. Currently our best "early warning method" is from our probes at the L1 Lagrange point, which sits directly between the Earth and the Sun. Unfortunately, by the time the L1 probes would detect these CMEs, they are already 99% of the way here. A much better method would be to use a statite (or quasite) probe which sits much closer to the sun, and uses the force of the sunlight to maintain a slower orbit directly between Earth and our star. This would give us a much better early warning system.
The only caveat to this is that, we could mitigate these dangers by improving our infrastructure here on Earth and preparing for these events.
2. The search for intelligent life beyond Earth.
Aliens.
No, seriously, aliens.
Talking about Aliens is always going to get people rolling their eyes, but life exists here. Life exists on Earth, and it existed pretty much as soon as the conditions were suitable for it to exist. In the billion years since then, it took a long time for an intelligent technological species to exist. But what about elsewhere? Are we the only critical thinkers anywhere in the universe? The FERMI paradox is a thought experiment that asks, where is everyone? But without investigation, it maybe that we're alone or it maybe that we're not.
So far we've had received a few signals that could be from alien civilisations. The "WOW" signal, and more recently a signal still being analysed by a private organisation. But frustratingly, no one really knows if these signals were from alien civilisations or just from a rogue satellite (or another man-made signal).
What we need is a to put detectors and telescopes in the quietest area of our solar system; the "Dark side of the moon" (more correctly, the far side of the moon)
The "dark side of the moon" isn't actually dark (well, aside from the 14 days per 28 day cycle that it is dark) but it is permanently facing away from the Earth. Man-mad signals, whether from Earth-satellites or ground based, won't reach there meaning we can far more easily detect SETI signals. (Although watch out for the increasingly common man-made Lunar satellites).
Also, the far side of the moon, during Lunar night, will likely be the darkest area of our solar system. We should be building telescopes there to investigate the original of our universe.
https://www.space.com/nasa-telescope-far-side-of-moon.html
https://www.wired.com/story/alien-hunters-need-far-side-moon-to-stay-quiet/
3. The search for non-intelligent life beyond Earth.
As previously mentioned, Life on Earth appeared pretty much right away when Earth was "ready" for it. Mars however, was likely "ready" for it, far sooner than Earth was, with warm liquid water and an atmosphere.
Did life exist on Mars before it did on Earth? Did Earth life originate from Mars? Did it exist separately? Does it still exist there now?
What about life on Venus? Specifically in the upper atmosphere.
What about life on Europa? Or Enceladus?
Finding life on other planets, even former life, would have a profound impact on us here. We might not be holding hands and singing songs together overnight, but it could have a massive impact on politics worldwide.
Probably, the only way we're ever going to know if life exists in our solar system is to go there. By sending humans.
4. Gamma Ray Bursts.
Gamma ray bursts are caused either by the explosion of a giant star, or the merging of two neutron stars, and are speculated to have already caused an extinction event on earth. GRBs are a candidate explanation as to why aliens don't exist everywhere.
One of my favourite shows on Netflix is "Into the night" a Belgium show about a "Solar event" that suddenly starts killing all life on the side of the Earth that sunlight reaches. It's a great show, and I'd seriously recommend watching it. I like to pretend it's not our Sun killing everything in the show, but a star that happens to be nearly in-line with our star. Either way, it shows the disastrous consequences of such an event, although it doesn't deal with GRBs destroying our Ozone layer and changing the chemistry in our atmosphere (maybe that will be in Season 2?)
It's unlikely that a GRBs event would happen in our life time, but we need to know about the true likelihood of these events.
5. Meteors.
A big one killed the dinosaurs. Smaller ones likely have caused many a megatsunami (although these seem to be more often caused by volcanic activity and land-slides) . A big meteor will strike earth at some point if we don't do anything to stop it.
There are loads of reasons to invest in Space. Humans are bad at preparing for unlikely but catastrophic events.
I do, I love pooing on them.People like to poo on the billionaires investing in space technology as a play thing for the super rich, which Earth suffers and slowly boils. And that's true. But it's also very wrong.
There are loads of really, really, really, really important reasons that we need to invest in space, and do it now. I'd like to present a few that I can think of off the top of my head.
1. Mitigating the damage from Coronal Mass Ejections
A coronal mass ejection (CME) is a significant release of plasma and accompanying magnetic field from the solar corona. They often follow solar flares and are normally present during a solar prominence eruption. Coronal mass ejections can disrupt radio transmissions and cause damage to satellites and electrical transmission line facilities, resulting in potentially massive and long-lasting power outages. The largest recorded geomagnetic perturbation, resulting presumably from a CME hitting the Earth's magnetosphere, was the solar storm of 1859 (the Carrington Event), which took down parts of the recently created US telegraph network, starting fires and shocking some telegraph operators.
If a "Carrington Event" happened today, some have said it would be a "Multi-Trillion Dollar Disaster". It's hard to say what the precise damage would be, and hard to say whether we could see a CME much worse than Carrington. The idea of planes falling from the sky, self driving cars going haywire, nuclear power plants going into melt-down and power-outages across entire continents are speculation, but they're not beyond the realms of possibility.
Maybe it will occur in 10 years, maybe in 100 years. Or maybe it will happen tomorrow. Humans are very very very bad at preparing for "unlikely" events (COVID being a prime example.) But something that has the capability of creating continent wide 9-11 events needs to be taken seriously.
How can space infrastructure prevent this?
CMEs travel fast, but slower than the speed of light. Currently our best "early warning method" is from our probes at the L1 Lagrange point, which sits directly between the Earth and the Sun. Unfortunately, by the time the L1 probes would detect these CMEs, they are already 99% of the way here. A much better method would be to use a statite (or quasite) probe which sits much closer to the sun, and uses the force of the sunlight to maintain a slower orbit directly between Earth and our star. This would give us a much better early warning system.
The only caveat to this is that, we could mitigate these dangers by improving our infrastructure here on Earth and preparing for these events.
2. The search for intelligent life beyond Earth.
Aliens.
No, seriously, aliens.
Talking about Aliens is always going to get people rolling their eyes, but life exists here. Life exists on Earth, and it existed pretty much as soon as the conditions were suitable for it to exist. In the billion years since then, it took a long time for an intelligent technological species to exist. But what about elsewhere? Are we the only critical thinkers anywhere in the universe? The FERMI paradox is a thought experiment that asks, where is everyone? But without investigation, it maybe that we're alone or it maybe that we're not.
So far we've had received a few signals that could be from alien civilisations. The "WOW" signal, and more recently a signal still being analysed by a private organisation. But frustratingly, no one really knows if these signals were from alien civilisations or just from a rogue satellite (or another man-made signal).
What we need is a to put detectors and telescopes in the quietest area of our solar system; the "Dark side of the moon" (more correctly, the far side of the moon)
The "dark side of the moon" isn't actually dark (well, aside from the 14 days per 28 day cycle that it is dark) but it is permanently facing away from the Earth. Man-mad signals, whether from Earth-satellites or ground based, won't reach there meaning we can far more easily detect SETI signals. (Although watch out for the increasingly common man-made Lunar satellites).
Also, the far side of the moon, during Lunar night, will likely be the darkest area of our solar system. We should be building telescopes there to investigate the original of our universe.
https://www.space.com/nasa-telescope-far-side-of-moon.html
https://www.wired.com/story/alien-hunters-need-far-side-moon-to-stay-quiet/
3. The search for non-intelligent life beyond Earth.
As previously mentioned, Life on Earth appeared pretty much right away when Earth was "ready" for it. Mars however, was likely "ready" for it, far sooner than Earth was, with warm liquid water and an atmosphere.
Did life exist on Mars before it did on Earth? Did Earth life originate from Mars? Did it exist separately? Does it still exist there now?
What about life on Venus? Specifically in the upper atmosphere.
What about life on Europa? Or Enceladus?
Finding life on other planets, even former life, would have a profound impact on us here. We might not be holding hands and singing songs together overnight, but it could have a massive impact on politics worldwide.
Probably, the only way we're ever going to know if life exists in our solar system is to go there. By sending humans.
4. Gamma Ray Bursts.
Gamma ray bursts are caused either by the explosion of a giant star, or the merging of two neutron stars, and are speculated to have already caused an extinction event on earth. GRBs are a candidate explanation as to why aliens don't exist everywhere.
One of my favourite shows on Netflix is "Into the night" a Belgium show about a "Solar event" that suddenly starts killing all life on the side of the Earth that sunlight reaches. It's a great show, and I'd seriously recommend watching it. I like to pretend it's not our Sun killing everything in the show, but a star that happens to be nearly in-line with our star. Either way, it shows the disastrous consequences of such an event, although it doesn't deal with GRBs destroying our Ozone layer and changing the chemistry in our atmosphere (maybe that will be in Season 2?)
It's unlikely that a GRBs event would happen in our life time, but we need to know about the true likelihood of these events.
5. Meteors.
A big one killed the dinosaurs. Smaller ones likely have caused many a megatsunami (although these seem to be more often caused by volcanic activity and land-slides) . A big meteor will strike earth at some point if we don't do anything to stop it.
There are loads of reasons to invest in Space. Humans are bad at preparing for unlikely but catastrophic events.
Are billionaires going to invest in Earth Protection? It's a question of if they can make money out of it, they don't have hearts, well not real ones, they have mechanical ones just like all of their other major organs. They've also been cloned in case there's an accident in their space vehicles. We're not getting rid of them that easily.
Aliens, yes I can see them attempting to find them, another revenue stream.
100+ years for a proper hotel that’s not a torturous environment that rich cnuts wouldn’t tolerate.
Looks like they're about 5 minutes away from launch from the plane
Doesn't look like it's going to last long, but I guess that's natural for a virgin
The world definitely looked flat from the feed on board
Not a great advert for virgin mobile this…they can’t get him on comms
Congrats Virgin Galactic
Yup. Crazy bastard did it. Fair play to him.
Space exploration is important, but this isnt space exploration or any progress towards it.
Agree, it’s just a dick swinging contest between billionaires.
I only hope it brings commercial air travel one step closer. If I could pay for an trip in to space before I die I’d be pretty chuffed.
Humanity is amazing in fairness.
I was watching this launch live on my phone as people who aren't astronauts go higher than ever before (is that right?).
At the same time I was watching the wimbledon final on the tv and playing chess online against somebody from Brazil and Finland
I was watching this launch live on my phone as people who aren't astronauts go higher than ever before (is that right?).
At the same time I was watching the wimbledon final on the tv and playing chess online against somebody from Brazil and Finland
It's not, this is a fairly irrelevant joyride. But what Musk is doing and what Bezos is building the capability to do are very relevant. And who knows, maybe the next Virgin plane will get to space proper.
Either way, Branson got there first so congrats to him.
I like the News headline. " Branson blast off with Virgin".
Bezos' turn tomorrow.
I hadn't realised New Shepard was also a suborbital capsule. What's the fecking point?
I hadn't realised New Shepard was also a suborbital capsule. What's the fecking point?
The guy that jumped from that baloon had more sense than this high altitude flight. Musk could have given both of these jokers a discount for a crew dragon seat. At least then they would be "proper" astronauts.
Militarization is definitely the wave of the future since there are now satellites who can disarm satellites of other nations, which can of course wreak havoc back on earth when you consider things like GPS and beyond. It was literally one of the reasons Space Force was created.
The UK is pretty invested in the Skynet system... I mean what can possibly go wrong with a system called skynet that's going to control unmanned attack drones and robots
So is there someone we can watch the Bezos launch in case it explodes?
https://www.cbsnews.com/live, apparently.