Posted on 03/19/2019 11:54:10 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Sorry, I'm a complete know-nothing when it comes to investing. So I'm just asking. Thank you for any input.
dig it... my annual Thai trip in 60 minutes! I’m down...
Just a quick suborbital hop. The limiting factor in this is safe, reliable engines, whether jet, rocket, or a hybrid of the 2. It seems, however that commercial aerospace seems to be doing a superior job to goobermint operations.
CC
I have no specific advice, other than to note that betting on the Wright Brothers or the creators of the Internet or the first Web browsers, et al would have been a rather poor investment strategy. Right about the technology, but wrong about the business. I think the best way to pick winners is to wait and see who starts winning.
That sounds like very sensible advice, thank you!
Lol. Get on a rocket? Not me. I’m old and weak now. But in the old days, I woulda broken their damned arm rests!
Suborbital is right. Forget interstellar. Too far to go, way to far. Light years away. Even if you could find a propulsion system before you got any appreciable distance to another star system everything and everybody you left on Earth will be long gone.
Also think what even a 1 gram rock would do to the hull of a ship when traveling at 0.10c. Even if you could detect the object the inertia of the ship would rip it apart during any evasive maneuver
When Musk announced the BFR a couple of years ago as a way to get to Mars, I shrugged. Space is too rough for humans, we have not even populated the extreme environments on earth.
However, when Musk as an aside mentioned earth to earth using the BFR, I perked up. Now there’s a game changer.
Big hurdle is re-entry. Can he do it with a non ablative shield? Then the next hurdle is noise. The BFR will be deafening, even from 20 miles away.
We recently got a Sony Bravia 65inch 4K Ultra HDTV and the first thing we started watching is the new Lost In Space show on Netflix.
I laughed at some parts, my wife cried at some parts and our 9yo daughter looked away at some parts but it is great!
The robot is really cool.
Actually, if you run the numbers (there are web calculators for such things), a trip to Alpha Centauri and back would take you 7 years. "Everybody you left on Earth" would have aged only about 15 years.
The presumption, and yes, I know it's a big one, it requires you to travel with constant-acceleration engine(s) for significant times to speed-up, slow-down for an AC "visit", speed-up for return, and slow-down for re-entry. Also, there is a presumption of a very short AC visit... add more time for the desired length of stay.
Occasional Cortex wont like it because it will cause global [insert latest fad]
Yup.Something the size of a grain of rice would be devastating.
Alpha Centauri is 4.22 light years from Earth. A single light is around six trillion miles. If you intend on coming back you’d have to square that distance. That’s going to be a lot longer, either way then just 7 years.
I’m sure that someday travel this way will be common. I’m too old to experience it probably, but it’s fun to watch it getting closer to reality.
As I said, running the numbers at web calculators for just this purpose, and you come up with 7 years (round trip) for the traveler and 15 for those back home. The operational presumption is 1-G constant acceleration to about 90% ‘c’. This takes 1 year (for the traveler, I believe). Thus, accelerate 1 year, decelerate 1 year, visit AC, accelerate 1 year, decelerate 1 year, back home and visit the remaining relatives that aged about double what you, as traveler, have aged.
The second SpaceX opportunity is for early flights of Starship to send tourists on missions beyond the Earth’s immediate orbit. In September, Musk announced Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa signed with SpaceX to fly around the moon on Starship. Maezawa expects to fly in 2023, with six to eight guests joining him for the flight.
...
The first static fire of the “hopper” test vehicle is scheduled for today.
This is exactly the reason it ain't gonna happen anytime soon. Commercial air travel is now so safe that we have gotten to the point where a crash in Ethopia is big news in the USA. There are no passenger planes crashing in the US, it is an extremely rare occurrence.
Sub-orbital rocket travel will only be popular until people start to die. All of the self-driving car news went away as soon as a couple of people died. Self-driving cars are coming eventually, but not yet.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.