[KaiserJeep]

Did you know that the US Government has licensed NINE commercial spaceports in the USA, has a tenth license pending, and is considering licensing another FIVE spaceports?



http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/the-spaceport-boom

In a few years Europe may have their first spaceport as well:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/space-flight/uk-lets-make-a-spaceport

[Sixstrings]

I didn't know that, Kaiser. Whatever industry we can get out ahead on is good for this country that's for sure. Should be some more federal support with it, we're #1 in energy now and space, space stuff still needs some government boost so let's run with it.

Some bets may turn out bad, like New Mexico state gov and the VG spaceport.

Here's my question though: I didn't know about all these other spaceports besides VG and SpaceX, what kind of launches and companies would be involved with the other spaceports???

[basil_hayden]

I work for one of the few companies that has actually designed a pentamodal transportation facility.

That's right - boat, plane, train, car/bike/ped AND NCC-1701!

[Keith_McClary]

[Sixstrings]

I work for one of the few companies that has actually designed a pentamodal transportation facility.

That's right - boat, plane, train, car/bike/ped AND NCC-1701!

Hm.. well.. ok, I'm all for it but can you just explain to me what kind of spaceships these municipalities think will be arriving at these spaceports they are building?

To my knowledge there are 3 launch companies in the US and one just blew up on the pad: Orbital, ULA, and spacex.

None of them are using these spaceports.

VG was going to land at the New Mexico spaceport. And VG is toast now too, and that was the only one that was going to do passenger joy rides.

What are the other spaceports for?

[Sixstrings]

Would be cool to see zepplins dock at the empire state building again:

[KaiserJeep]

-snip-

To my knowledge there are 3 launch companies in the US and one just blew up on the pad: Orbital, ULA, and spacex.

None of them are using these spaceports.

VG was going to land at the New Mexico spaceport. And VG is toast now too, and that was the only one that was going to do passenger joy rides.

What are the other spaceports for?

ONE spacecraft and ONE of two pilots was just lost. Virgin Galactic is not toast. The second SpaceShipTwo is under construction and will fly in 2015. Contracts exist for SS2's #3-5. Do you remember who these people were?

Vladimir Komarov (Soyuz 1), Michael Adams (X-15-191), Georgi Dobrovolski/Viktor Patsayev/Vladislav Volkov (Soyuz 11), Gus Grissom/Edward White II/Roger Chaffee (Apollo 1),Greg Jarvis/Christa McAuliffe/Ronald McNair/Ellison Onizuka/Judith Resnik/Michael J. Smith/Dick Scobee (STS-51), Rick D. Husband/William McCool/Michael P. Anderson/David M. Brown/Kalpana Chawla/Laurel B. Clark/Ilan Ramon (STS-107).

That is the list of dead astronauts - so far. Add to that list Mike Alsbury (SpaceShipTwo-2).

Flight fatalities happen. If it helps you to grasp the real level of risk, more people are killed per passenger car miles driven than spaceship miles flown. We don't give up cars because of that fact, nor will we abandon space travel. Just as the literally THOUSANDS of pilots killed during early aviation did not cause us to abandon air travel.

You mentioned the four publicly traded companies that are engaged in commercial manned space travel. There are roughly another dozen, both publicly and privately funded, who shun publicity and are engaged in fulfilling government contracts, mostly to do with Earth-facing satellites. Then there are another half dozen or so aiming for unmanned deep space missions. It is the manned flight companies that tend to attract the most attention, including you.

Those spaceports are for BOTH manned and unmanned spaceships. I think the Scaled Composite approach of mothership/spaceship has a future in both orbital and suborbital flights, the spaceship carried by the mothership could easily be an orbiter or deep space vessel. SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) designs, both manned and unmanned, can also land at spaceports.

[Keith_McClary]

If it helps you to grasp the real level of risk, more people are killed per passenger car miles driven than spaceship miles flown.

Almost all those spaceship miles being in low earth orbit. I guess riding the ISS is by far the safest way to travel per mile.

[Sixstrings]

You mentioned the four publicly traded companies that are engaged in commercial manned space travel. There are roughly another dozen, both publicly and privately funded, who shun publicity and are engaged in fulfilling government contracts, mostly to do with Earth-facing satellites. Then there are another half dozen or so aiming for unmanned deep space missions. It is the manned flight companies that tend to attract the most attention, including you.

Well, yeah, I'm interested in nasa and cool pictures from Titan and hubble telescopes and all that.

Do you know any of the names of these other US companies that do satellite launch, I'm just curious. Because far as I know it's just ULA and now spacex.

Those spaceports are for BOTH manned and unmanned spaceships. I think the Scaled Composite approach of mothership/spaceship has a future in both orbital and suborbital flights, the spaceship carried by the mothership could easily be an orbiter or deep space vessel.

Ok, that's Burt Rutan's.

I don't want to be a jerk but kaiser we've had these dreamer projects that are always talked about but nothing has done what spacex has. NOBODY has shaken up the industry like that and taken over the market like this.

These other things, you just hear about them for 20 and 30 years and nothing ever seems to come of it.

I'm just interested in BIG things -- like worldwide satellite launch market domination, doing all of the air force's launches, all their commercial business.

They just got a contract to launch $3 billion worth of satellites for Iridium, some kind of mobile communications company or whatever:

Iridium Counting on SpaceX To Maintain Launch Tempo
http://www.spacenews.com/article/satellite-telecom/42458with-one-satellite-to-spare-iridium-counting-on-spacex-to-maintain

Kaiser, the future of space is INDUSTRIAL. It's not so much joy rides and a space hotel, as cool and excellent as that is and I'm all for it but that's not BIG.

Here's some latest news, spacex is going to team with google and launch 700 small orbiting internet satellites:

At 700 satellites, that would make this array more than 10 times larger than the fleet operated by the world's leading satellite company, Iridium Communications. Each unit would be about half the size as the smallest commercial device in use.

Wyler founded WorldVu Satellites, which controls a significant chunk of radio spectrum. He's teaming up with Musk, the report says, to use that spectrum to beam Internet access to people across the globe, much like tech companies Facebook and Google are seeking to accomplish by way of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones.
http://www.cnet.com/news/next-up-for-elon-musk-launching-satellites-into-space/

So he's got Iridium's business now, the current largest network, and he's going to launch what will be the future largest network (I gather it's just for the satellite internet beamed to earth that google wants to do).

So anyhow.. look, spaceplane joyrides are cool, Burt Rutan is cool, but IT'S MAKING A LOT OF MONEY that can make a aerospace company WORK. And being able to launch payloads into space for cheap prices, and being able to launch the largest payloads in the world -- NASA can use spacex now, the falcon heavy, to do a mars mission and save a heck of a lot of money.

Or private groups. Cheaper launch costs mean more science, too.

I'm just saying yeah I'm not into the joyride spaceplane stuff -- that's never going to be a BIG industry, except way down the road when somebody finally gets a suborbital passenger craft to compete with the arilines, and then you gotta have it hold 300 people too to make it profitable or else it's just the concorde that's cool but never profitable.

To put it another way, what gets my curiosity is tech advance and anything having to do with space that IS GOING TO BE PROFITABLE and make a heck of a lot of money. That's what will push space forward, profit, and that's industry that's not joy rides.

As a taxpayer, I don't think I would support a "spaceport" and the state paying for it unless I knew there was going to be some big serious business profitable business going on there. Does that make sense? There's a spaceport that's like a test range and sounds cool, and then there's a real spaceport, ya know?

You can't just have the dreamer part, these guys gotta think about how to make money with it.

[KaiserJeep]

You can answer most of your own questions, I have things to do and places to go this warm and sunny weekend. But allow me to point out that as the existing world falls in upon itself a few decades from now, the only money to be made and the only place to spend it will be in space. The planet will be deeply mired in economic collapse, it is a problem that nobody need worry about. A few fierce cannibals survive on the planet, those in space experience glorious unlimited growth for hundreds of years.

Freeman Dyson has thought it through. Look up "Dyson Sphere".

[Quinny]

This is getting hilarious!

My family are questioning why I have suddenly started laughing at a seemingly innocent tv show!

[Sixstrings]

You can answer most of your own questions, I have things to do and places to go this warm and sunny weekend.

This got off on the wrong track, all I asked were what companies are in those spaceports.

It wasn't an argument, here's a picture of a bunch of spaceports and I'm just curious what on earth are in the spaceports.

I shall look them up on wikipedia when I get around to it.

Reading the article you linked, it just says:

Just how big the commercial space market would have to be to support all these launch sites is an open question.

I would just say -- the launch market is plenty big, the challenge is for a company to make a rocket engine and make stages, and make sure it actually works reliably, and then do it all for as cheap as SpaceX can do it, or cheaper.

If someone can do all that then God bless them I'd love to see that -- but so far not even ULA can seem to make an engine in the USA.

[Sixstrings]

I mean, look, I'm not trying to be a naysayer, I'm a space booster.

But look at this, "let's make a spaceport!"

UK: Let's Make a Spaceport!



In a bid for rapid-fire relevance in the emerging private spaceplane industry, the UK government announced its intent to open a commercial passenger spaceport within four years. Eight airfields have been singled out as the British Isles’ answer to New Mexico's “Spaceport America” — one each in England and Wales, with the remaining six in Scotland.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/space-flight/uk-lets-make-a-spaceport

I mean I don't care, unless it were my tax dollars or unless I were fool enough to buy stock in one of these, but the thing is -- spaceplanes do not exist, as yet. You can't just make a spaceport and somehow think the spaceplanes will just appear.

So okay, "let's make a spaceport!" -- has anyone thought about what will land at the spaceport?

You gotta figure out how to make a space PLANE before you can build a bunch of space PORTS.

It's not going to be easy. At best, you'll have a concorde situation and that would take billions of dollars and still be the holy grail and monumental feat -- the world's first suborbital spaceplane.

You probably couldn't even get it to hold as many as the Concorde did. But even the Concorde didn't have enough capacity to ever be profitable.

I'm for this thing -- I am not against it -- the sad thing is just that what it honestly needs is many billions from government to finally do this and actually make a reusable *spaceplane* -- THE holy grail.

Otherwise I just see so many problems.. safety, for one.. look what happened with VG.. how in God's name is any Burt Rutan spaceplane even going to get rated to be safe for passengers.. this whole industry is so new.. nobody has even made a working spaceplane yet, look how long it took Virgin Galactic, look what happened in that test flight.

Am I being a downer?

I just think Musk had the best idea. He made a darn rocket. And that was hard enough as it was, and he almost failed. But a good old rocket has wound up being the cheapest thing possible, to get big payloads into space.

We're a long way out from a Delta or British Airways doing any suborbital space plane routes -- folks, we do not in fact have any spaceplanes that exist, as yet.

[SeaGypsy]

Bags of gas, much less fallic, more boob like really. Nice & quiet, supersonic dive return in a space suit, heck, I'd pay for a ride on that before any rocket.

[Henriksson]

You can answer most of your own questions, I have things to do and places to go this warm and sunny weekend. But allow me to point out that as the existing world falls in upon itself a few decades from now, the only money to be made and the only place to spend it will be in space. The planet will be deeply mired in economic collapse, it is a problem that nobody need worry about. A few fierce cannibals survive on the planet, those in space experience glorious unlimited growth for hundreds of years.

Freeman Dyson has thought it through. Look up "Dyson Sphere".

Maybe living on Antarctica is the next best thing.

[Keith_McClary]

They just got a contract to launch $3 billion worth of satellites for Iridium, some kind of mobile communications company or whatever

The system is being used extensively by the U.S. Department of Defense through the DoD gateway in Hawaii.[14] The service revenue to governments made up 23% of Iridium's revenues in 2012. An investigation was begun into the DoD contract after a protest by Globalstar, to the U.S. General Accounting Office that no tender was provided. A hold against the contract was lifted at the request of the Department of Defense, which cited national security reasons.[15]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_Communications

[Sixstrings]

Bags of gas, much less fallic, more boob like really. Nice & quiet, supersonic dive return in a space suit, heck, I'd pay for a ride on that before any rocket.

Yep, you're actually right!

Why don't people do that? I'm assuming because it seems so darn SCARY -- riding up on a weather balloon and skyjumping from the stratosphere -- but really, barring chute failure and how likely is that, it's actually safe.

Are these spaceplanes safe.

I don't know.

Scary as it is, three parachutes strapped to you -- one main, two reserve -- is actually safe. That google exec did the jump recently:

‘High performing’ Google exec quietly breaks stratosphere jump record
http://rt.com/news/199136-eustace-stratosphere-jump-record/

[Sixstrings]

Joe Kittenger did this first back in the 60s.

Here's a HD video stratosohpere jump, amazing:

Felix Baumgartner - Headcam footage 128k ft space jump
Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian daredevil skydiver, has become the only human being to beat the speed of sound (767 miles/hour) after skydiving from 128,100 feet above the earth at an incredible speed of 833 miles/hour.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDdFlhzNq8o