While this might be momentarily OT, I suspect it will become a central
source of interest on AR if either Bezos or Musk opens a space-themed
attraction or larger park near Canaveral (not an unheard-of source of
revenue in the central FL neighborhood).
XCOR, for example, will be flying tourists from there. So, *somebody*
building a tourist-friendly launch area or demonstration hall seems more
likely than not.
For SpaceX, especially, the idea of using a theme park venue to promulgate
Musk's Mars colony might be a financial multiplier of some sort, as well as
politically expedient. NB: Stars North runs the Kennedy visitor complex.
As for Bezos... Well, Amazon does everything *else* entertainment-related
as well as the next, if not just a bit better, so why not? Especially
since some version of Blue Origin's flight hardware is meant to be used as
a suborbital tourist-hopper, as well as an orbital vehicle. (Be fun if
some combination of the above somehow joined forces with the preexisting
local theme-park enterprises for a Buck Rogers tourist destination, but
somehow that seems unlikely.-)
On Sat, Dec 26, 2015 at 12:30 AM, Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Wed, 23 Dec 2015, James Fackert wrote:
Blue origin landing is interesting but its intent is to some day be a
rocket
amusement ride.
Hop up to the edge of space. No orbit no working payload.
Whether it's a "working payload" doesn't matter; what matters is whether
it's a *paying* payload. If what the paying customers get out of it is
amusement rather than, say, scientific knowledge, so what? (You might also
want to consider which of those might be the bigger market.)
Note also that there are a fair number of people who would like to be able
to fly "working payloads" up to the edge of space, if they can do it rather
more cheaply than flying them to orbit.
Falcon 9 is the 747 to orbit and back and is already trucking supplies to
iss and putting working satellites into orbit.
No comparison, imho.
Falcon 9 is certainly *ahead*, but otherwise, it's perfectly reasonable to
compare the two -- it's just a bit difficult. If your goal is cheap orbit,
then whether it's better to go suborbital first and then progress to
orbital, or to go expendable first and then progress to reusable, is a
perfectly reasonable question, although not simple to answer.
Remember that SpaceX doesn't *have* an operational reusable rocket yet --
just an initial proof of principle, achieved with some difficulty. Many
would say that Elon is doing things the hard way, losing much of the
benefit of reusability by treating it as a later add-on.
... Its amusing to see the doubters continue to
doubt that they will acomplish the "next" step as each is accomplished.
Do consider that SpaceX is on its second rocket (Falcon 1 having been a
technical struggle and a complete financial flop, although a useful
pathfinder for Falcon 9) and its second attempt at first-stage reusability
(the original splash-down-and-salvage-parts concept having been a complete
failure, as some of the "doubters" correctly predicted). The most notable
thing about SpaceX is not that it always succeeds, because sometimes it
doesn't, but that it's been persistent enough to amend its plan and press
on when some part of the original plan didn't work.
Henry