So my mind starts racing and comes up with an interesting idea. I think it'll work. I can spend days and weeks doing the research (and I might), but the reality is I'm not a business person. I'm an engineer and I get into the technical aspects of things. So using the power of the internet, maybe someone will read this who can comment or use the idea, etc. I'm not going to hold a firm grip on an idea if I can't do anything with it but someone else could.
So the problem with the current group of commercial space travel companies is that they're developing new technology and trying new ideas that need to be thoroughly tested. Well, what if we kept things simple?
Alan Shepard was the first US astronaut to go into space, but he didn't orbit the earth. It was a quick 15 minutes up and down to the Bahamas. Well, what if a company would build a rocket that took you from Florida to the Bahamas in 15 minutes? Just up and down. You have some time to play with food floating around, etc. When you splash down you can get picked up and spend a wonderful weekend in the islands with your family and friends celebrating your heroic trip. The tie of the trip to US space history would be useful.
How could such a venture be funded? Easy...advertising. Put adds on the rocket...put up a webcam in the capsule with a sponsor...sponsor the splash down, etc. Plus, astronaut training could also be a great time for sponsors to come in and show off the latest luxury car or mutual fund, etc. (of course, avoiding tacky would be good).
The technology could be simple also. A hybrid rocket would give enough thrust and be safe enough for a passenger. A second rocket with a real astronaut would be ready to launch if any problems occured on the way back.
It sounds crazy and a lot of you probably want to not acknowledge our relationship now, but the advertising might be enough to make a simple suborbital flight profitable.
Any real space enterpeneurs have any thoughts on this?
1 comment:
Hi, David. Yeah, that's basically what SpaceShipOne and SS2 are using, i.e. hybrid rocket engines.
In fact, Scaled recently switched back to SpaceDev as their rocket supplier. I guess this has something to do with the difficulties they had (including the disastrous fatal test explosion last year) developing the SS2 engine.
Hybrids are a good way to go, because they can be throttled back/cut off if necessary unlike regular solids. There was actually a neat company, Amroc, that 2 decades ago developed a lot of the early hybrid technology, though sadly no one ever mentions their role in Rutan's successes nowadays.
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