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Published online 25 January 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.528
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SpaceShip Two unveiled
Clever spacecraft design allows for training and 'safer' return to Earth.
This week, Richard Branson unveiled his vision for the future of commercial spaceflight (see also our blog post in To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
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It is wonderful, I dream oneday i have the chance to go to space ~~~ COME ON
Within the discussion of climate change the energy amount of such projects should be considered very critically. Is this technology really a desirable goal for the society?
As a writer, as an ecologist, a teacher, an environmentalist - and as one who is in the queue to fly on SpaceShip Two - I regard all of these activities as compatible, indeed, as reinforcing. SpaceShip Two is engineered to create a trivial amount of atmospheric pollution: about the same, per passenger, as a occupying a business class seat across the Atlantic. In exchange, the rewards of the experience of space flight cannot be measured conventionally. How does one place a value on inspiration? On epiphany? Has not the famous Apollo 8 photo of "Marble Earth" rising above the lunar horizon become the poster child for the environmental movement? I'm confident that the experience of space flight will prove to be more to me than just the fulfillment of a livelong dream. It will make me a keener writer, a more inspiring teacher - and yet more devoted to conserving the biota of our natal planet and the biogeochemical systems that sustain it.
Calling this 'Richard Branson's vision' is a bit misleading. This is the creation of Burt Rutan and his Scaled Composites team pure and simple and is being built in Rutan's facility in Mojave, California, just like SpaceShip One. No slight on Branson by any means, but he simply stepped in and became the bankroll and marketer when it became apparent that Rutan would win the X Prize. I'm a great fan of Rutan's and I went to see the first flight of SpaceShip One. But let's be honest, this is a spectacular joyride that harkens back to the barnstormer era with the key difference being that even a poor farmer could afford a flight. Here there will be only a relatively tiny number of actual aircraft and flights. There's no real practical application for this aircraft other than to give extremely wealthy people a taste of space. Calling this 'commercial space flight' is strictly accurate I suppose but it will be decades before a true civilian space transport industry will have anything more than token meaning. In the same way that barnstormers didn't give way to a true airline industry for decades.
Prior to this, manned flight to orbit has been astronomically expensive. So this is revolutionary. Space is a frontier where we can expand without destroying our planet. Steven Hawking is absolutely right about the necessity to move into space and onto other planets, so that we can save this one, our birthplace. This is a very small step toward the stars, but a huge step toward colonizing space and Mars.
This really is a case of nature (as reported in Nature) imitating art. A few years ago I wrote a SF novel in which I described a spaceship thus... ... At first glance it looked like two long-haul airliners knitted together side by side, the inner wings shortened and joined, the tails grown into one another. It sat there, huge and lumbering in the gloom, its weight taken by five undercarriage assemblies - two nosewheels, a maingear under each outer wing and another beneath the structure that joined the twin fuselages. But this mammoth machine was only the tanker, a windowless generator of brute force, a carrier designed to lift the tug, the real spacecraft, to the outer margins of atmosphere. And sitting there, atop the curving silver alloy of the tanker, was the winged black and silver shape of the tug itself, the only part of this aeronautical monster designed to continue into space. ... ... As the poet said "Navigare Necessere Est, Vivere Non". To be human is to reach out, to look, to touch and to discover. The dinosaurs kept their feet firmly on the ground, never asking what was on the other side of the sky. And that's why they are dead.
A remarkable display of human courage, entrepreneurship and imagination.
this looks promising, it kind look crossbreed of a Boeing and the Space Shuttle "glue"ed together!!!!!! Yes it's going to be expensive at first, then maybe in 3 years or less, the price ticket will go "skyrocket" downward!!!!!! it look wonder in flight at night, now you can stars forever!!!!!!!
In future, people may be taken to space to watch movies in Space Cinemas or other entertainments based on floating huge space ships. Already they have some plan for Space Hotel.
In future, people may be taken to space to watch movies in Space Cinemas or other entertainments based on floating huge space ships. Already they have some plan for Space Hotel.
After the Challenger disaster, NASA's program was put on hold for nearly three years, but in private enterprise the loss of three men merits a $25,000 fine. If as a society we choose to believe that only private wealth has the social standing to be allowed the choice to go boldly or recklessly into space, then that is what will happen.
Only one once looks back at the Earth from the darkness of space, then he would realise how lucky we're to have a living planet, and to protect it in any way possible.
5 minute of suborbital flight, eh? Those peanuts better be outstanding. Ahhhh, but it is a grand adventure! Kudos and good luck to these pioneers. The world needs more of them.