OT: Virgin Galactic

[Elefantino]

Branson is on his way to "space."

The cost for a commercial flight is $28 million.

Ahem.

[dave thompson]

Regardless of the economic/political/personal machinations and hand-wringing, this is a pretty damn great accomplishment. I watched it live and cried.

[guyintense]

I watched it too and noticed that they never mentioned Burt Rutan. Not once.

[FlashUNC]

I'm guessing Branson didn't acknowledge the one test pilot who died and the other who barely survived in the development of this nonsense project.

[redir]

Originally Posted by FlashUNC

I'm guessing Branson didn't acknowledge the one test pilot who died and the other who barely survived in the development of this nonsense project.

Just pawns in the game.

---

Honesty I don't give one ratz azz about billionaires who don't pay their employees a decent wage going to space. Well that's not true I care enough to make this post but that's about it. Lets move on.

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by redir

Just pawns in the game.

---

Honesty I don't give one ratz azz about billionaires who don't pay their employees a decent wage going to space. Well that's not true I care enough to make this post but that's about it. Lets move on.

For example, a 12th year captain on the 777, 787, or A330, is making $293 per hour. At 900 hours per year, that's ~$264,000 per year.

[redir]

Originally Posted by oldpotatoe

I don't have time to go into the wage analyses of CEO versus worker pay over the last 3 decades and it would cause this thread to be shut down so I won't.



In short, while they pay less and less of the fair share their boats keep getting bigger while we who pay more into the fair share, our dwellings keep getting smaller.

[fignon's barber]

I envisioned something a little more modern looking. Looks like it should have an 8 track in the cockpit.

[zap]

Originally Posted by guyintense

I watched it too and noticed that they never mentioned Burt Rutan. Not once.

I noticed that too.

I am enjoying the resurgent space”race”. Yes, the US did some of this 65 years ago but then the US slipped way down the slope to relying on old soviet technology. Plenty of lost knowledge.

So, now we have several companies working on concepts. You can’t go from zero to Mars without taking many steps, many repeated using new materials, etc. Some of these firms are crawling now but let’s see where in the race these companies are 10 years from now.

[wallymann]

Originally Posted by zap

...So, now we have several companies working on concepts. You can’t go from zero to Mars without taking many steps, many repeated using new materials, etc. Some of these firms are crawling now but let’s see where in the race these companies are 10 years from now.

virgin galactic isnt developing anything to get humans to mars, they are all about sub-orbital space tourism.

[zap]

Originally Posted by wallymann

virgin galactic isnt developing anything to get humans to mars, they are all about sub-orbital space tourism.

As I posted, some firms are working on concepts.

Lifting off from the planet takes a lot of energy. Who knows, maybe a battery powered plane will be the launching platform for a small space craft traveling to a space station.......from a space station to........

[wallymann]

Originally Posted by dave thompson

Regardless of the economic/political/personal machinations and hand-wringing, this is a pretty damn great accomplishment. I watched it live and cried.

virgin galactic has already done this flight profile many times.

whats the new "accomplishment" for today's flight -- a billionaire ride-along?

hell, soyuz has already done that...and gone further to orbit and dock with ISS.

the virgin galactic team has indeed done a fair bit of innovation getting to this point -- props to the engineers, but today was just a publicity stunt.

[bicycletricycle]

Originally Posted by wallymann

virgin galactic has already done this flight profile many-many times.

whats the new "accomplishment" for todays flight -- a billionaire ride-along?

hell, soyuz has already done that...and gone further to orbit and dock with ISS.

Man rides on the space ship he owns. Didn’t require the involuntary funding by threat of jail of hundreds of millions of people to get there.

[wallymann]

Originally Posted by wallymann

the virgin galactic team has indeed done a fair bit of innovation getting to this point -- props to the engineers, but today was just a publicity stunt.

...and props to branson for bankrolling the entire virgin galactic endeavour.

[Clean39T]

They say seeing the planet from space changes you…..

I guess that’s the best we can hope for these… um.. people.


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