NASA: buy seats on SS2 etc?

[docm]

Aviation Week & Space Technology<br /><br />http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_awst_story.jsp?id=news/aw103006p2.xml<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>NASA is already talking to Virgin and the others about using their vehicles for both microgravity experiments and astronaut training (AW&ST Oct. 23, p. 23). And the agency's interest in buying flights on the new vehicles extends beyond microgravity applications to using them for experiments in Earth's upper atmosphere as an analog for the thin atmosphere of Mars.<br /><br />"This is a major area where aeronautics and space and exploration all come together, and potentially their capabilities will give us an early test of that," says Simon (Pete) Worden, director of Ames Research Center. "We don't understand how to control something as it reenters the Mars atmosphere. The upper parts of the Earth's atmosphere are emulators of the Martian atmosphere, so we can figure out the control surfaces and the stability and so on, which is right now unknown."<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Wow.... <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[PistolPete]

Hmm, interesting. Perhaps NASA and the Air Force will buy an SS2 and use it as an X-plane. This hearkens back to the good ol' days of the X-15. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><em>So, again we are defeated. This victory belongs to the farmers, not us.</em></p><p><strong>-Kambei Shimada from the movie Seven Samurai</strong></p> </div>

 

[smashing_young_man]

Well, it's about time that spaceflight had a serious injection of good ol' fashioned capitalism. Perhaps it can do for space travel what it did for the car and plane.

 

[SpaceKiwi]

Well at the cost per for a SS2 ticket, versus building your own experiment platform, it would be a smart use of NASA cash to see if they can get a bulk deal on a few flights. The proviso being SS2 has to prove itself first of course.<br /><br />Who knows, maybe in a few years MS Astronaut trainees might pass through SS2 on their way to full flight status, in the same way they do rudementary training and back-seat riding in the T-38's now. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em><font size="2" color="#ff0000">Who is this superhero?  Henry, the mild-mannered janitor ... could be!</font></em></p><p><em><font size="2">-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</font></em></p><p><font size="5">Bring Back The Black!</font></p> </div>

 

[docm]

By that time Virgin will be selling honeymoon packages to Bigelows lunar hotel <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>