Commercial Space Flight in our Time
 

Branson just did it. Looks like something to add to my bucket list.

Just watched it.....pretty cool.

And it makes sense. I always thought, why would you use yuge rockets to propel your craft from the ground, when you could do what Branson just did.....use a plane to get your craft up as far as you can, to where the air gets thin, then use less power to propel your space-going craft the rest of the way? You use an inordinate amount of fuel just trying to gain speed and altitude just to get to 30 or 40 thousand feet, why not just start your journey from that altitude?

That’s WAY down my bucket list of things to spend lots of money on.

Yep. Less stress on the body and I would think it's safer. I like having a pilot on board instead of fully automated flight like others are proposing.

More humans in space today than any time in history:seasix:

I would think it has to deal with the amount of weight you are trying to get up there.

It was all sketchy about it happening until, mrvette, found the torque specs. and got all the bolts torqued down.

BS. He left one out and used jb weld. Drilled two 1/8" holes in the rear gasket. Dude's a jeeeenyus!:D

🤣😂🤣

Chuck Yeager, launched to break the speed of sound in a rocket plane at altitude.

It would be a fun ride when they light the rocket. The telemetry was cool. I know some SR71/U2 pilots skirted the edge of space. I don't know, if they crossed over the boundary or not?

If I had disposable income I would go up in a second :seasix:

And I damned sure wouldn't do it in Bezos' Big Blue Dildo.

If I had the money and inclination to do it, my preferences for who I would go with would be

Musk

Branson

Bezos

You can have them. I’ll go with the Friday Five. :dance:

If I had that kind of disposable coin, it wouldn't be to just get a glorified airplane ride...:rofl:

Air launch is safer for crew/ passengers. A rocket is nothing more than a ballistic weapon with a crew capsule replacing the warhead. If it has issues on take off, you die. In a lifted air launch if something goes wrong you clear the mothership and glide back down. Before the replacement program for Shuttle was canned one of the competing companies was proposing a 747 towed Orbiter for the safety factor......

The SR-71A holds the record for highest sustained air-breathing flight of just over 85,000 feet. Even in the US, where the boundary is considered 50 miles high, that is 50 x 5280 = 264,000 feet. I have vague memories of stories of pilots using momentum to temporarily get them higher than 85,000 feet, but I doubt they got above 264K.

Oh look, that commie libtard Brian Stelter or whatever his name is went on record spounting off some bullshit questioning if space flight was a good idea during the times of KungFlu and global warming..err... what are they using now? Oh, that's right, Climate Change.

More weight/ size? Upscale the size of the mothership/ spacecraft. Which has already been done: https://techscalar.com/wp-content/up...2e9b05_b-1.jpg