Richard Branson Plans Orbital Spaceships For Virgin Galactic 177
Velcroman1 writes "Following the historic first rocket-powered flight of its SpaceShipTwo vehicle, Virgin Galactic plans to build a fleet of spaceships and begin ferrying hundreds of tourists into space in 2014. And then? A whole new kind of spacecraft, Sir Richard Branson said. 'We'll be building orbital spaceships after that,' Branson told Fox News Tuesday, 'so that people who want to go for a week or two can.' Assuming the cost is on the same scale, would you pay a few hundred grand for a few weeks in orbit?"
$200K ... Uh Oh. (Score:5, Interesting)
If I could get to orbit for $1,000,000, forget it. The problem is that $200K is just barely in reach, and I'd start thinking about selling my house.
So, short answer. Yes.
Re:A week in orbit while... (Score:2, Interesting)
The poor scramble for food, food stamps ( SNAP program ) is being cut
The 20% of American children are in poverty
Pensions and Social Security are being cut leaving people with a life of work out in the cold
Our priorities are wrong.
No, our priorities are just right. Unless you want to kill off 90% of the worlds population, people will be *forever* in poverty. There's not enough resources on the Earth -- by a substantial factor -- to support seven billion people without 3/4 of them living in poverty conditions.
If you let the plight of the unfortunate (and irresponsible -- those people living in poverty are continuing to procreate, after all) stop progress, humanity will go extinct on this planet, along with every other form of life. Five billion years of evolution, of living and dying, would be wiped out as the sun ages... for nothing.
If humans get off the planet, there could be trillions of lives that get to exist because of it.
If a week in orbit drives advancement in technology that gets live off this planet for good, 'm morally comfortable with a few billion living in poverty for the opportunity for many trillions to live in the future. We don't get a second chance at this -- we've built up this opportunity on a technological house of cards that can't be rebuilt if it falls. There's no "easy" energy left. If people don't get off the planet and something happens that knocks us back from our "modern" level of technology, there won't be another industrial revolution to get us back. If we go extinct and some other species evolves intelligence 200 million years from now, they *won't* have the chance to do what we do -- because we won't have left the energy resources that drove advancement for the last 5000 years. Climate conditions have changed, you won't get new oil or new coal being laid down.
The morally correct thing to do would be to put vastly MORE resources into getting life multiplanet, as a stepping stone to getting it beyond there.