That $200,000 ticket aboard the Virgin Galactic, which will soon be taking off from a runway in New Mexico, may seem out of range for most of us. But for scientists it's a deal, considering NASA is used to paying millions per space mission. It's a cheaper way to go weightless, even if only for a few minutes.
According to a story in the New York Times, the voyages, which will be offered by Virgin Galactic, XCOR Aerospace, Blue Origin, and Armadillo Aerospace will be providing scientists easy access to space to conduct a variety of experiments:
"Scientists currently have a few options for investigating weightlessness. They can drop the experiment from a tall tower, which provides a couple of seconds of zero gravity before it goes splat on the ground. They can send the experiment up in an airplane that flies an arcing trajectory known as a parabola, which provides up to half a minute of apparent weightlessness. Or they can get something to the International Space Station, where the pull of gravity is continuously absent."
This is somewhere in between. The new flights won't actually get you into orbit because you need to be going 17,500 miles per hour for that. Rather, they essentially project you up into Earth's middle atmosphere where you hangout weightless for about four minutes and then float back down.
The Southwest Research Institute is the first customer to buy seats aboard both the Virgin Galactic and the XCOR Aerospace for a variety of experiments including how loose soil and rocks like those that cover asteroids behave. Scientists are jumping at the chance to employ this new technology. But there is certainly a potential downside.
Space Tourism and Climate Change
Lloyd Alter over at TreeHugger wrote about space tourism and climate change. And this isn't a small worry. According to his report, new research shows "that over a period of 10 years, private rocket launches could produce enough black carbon emissions to change global temperatures and accelerate climate change." Is projecting people into space by burning rubber and nitrous oxide really worth it? For many, it's yet to be determined.
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More on Space Tourism:
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Can Space Tourism Really Be Green?