Alan Boyle has an interesting "compare and contrast" of the current planned providers:

The feedback from would-be fliers has been that "the overall nature of the experience is primarily about the view, and feeling the forces," Lauer said. Thus, both companies are trying to optimize the view of a curving Earth, spread out beneath the black sky of space. But they're doing it using different methods.

SpaceShipTwo will offer as many portholes as it can, placed strategically around the side walls of the passenger cabin. Rocketplane, in contrast, plans to make the most of the forward view. "The best views are really out the front window, just as they are with any airplane. ... When you're in the back seats, it's surprising how much of the forward view you do get," Lauer said.

Back-seat passengers will each get two of their own windows as well, currently planned for placement at shoulder height and above their heads, he said.

The SpaceShipTwo concept gives you dials to watch, showing G-forces, altitude and other statistics, plus a larger cabin display. Rocketplane promises to provide a customizable video display for each passenger. And both spacecraft will be fairly bristling with video cameras to record the highlights of your out-of-this-world flight.

Rand

A careful reading of that brief note leads one to believe that you may see Soros giving money to Albert Gore to enable him to continue his crusade to persuade the world that smoking cigarettes is a contributor to global warming.

Dennis

I'm not sure how to parse "I'm interested in policy and not in politics."

If Mr. Soros plans to restrict his involvement to bloviations before occasional meetings of his fellow would-be do-gooders, long may he impotently wave.

On the other hand, perhaps he intends simply to eschew all this messy and unpredictable campaign contributions and democracy business and go straight to vote-buying and bribery instead.

Damn! Stuck that last one on the wrong thread. How mortifying.

Okay, evidently Dennis W. broke trail here first and I just followed without looking closely enough. Note to self: no posting before fully waking up.

In Albuquerque on the local new last night there was a piece about what Virgin is planning to do in New Mexico. According to the news piece, they plan to be flying people on suborbital flights (out of the New Mexico spaceport) in 2008 with "several minutes of weightlessness" and two pilots for safety purposes. They reported the expected cost to be about $200,000 a head for what would be, according to the newscast, a two and a half hour suborbital experience.

Ditto on the waking up thingy.

:)

Dennis

Time will tell if suborbital flights at $200k a pop is a good business model, but my bet is no. If the experience is about gs and a view of the curvature of the Earth it seems like one would buy a ride on a Russian Mig 29 and a ride on the vomit comet. The Mig will give you all the gs you can handle and a view from 70 kft. The vomit comet gives you none of the gs you don’t want all for less than ¼ price. Plus the odds of returning alive from your ¼ price amusement park ride are way better. I’ll take the Mig any ol day.

[i]The Mig will give you all the gs you can handle and a view from 70 kft. The vomit comet gives you none of the gs you don’t want all for less than ¼ price.[/i]

70,000 feet, big whoop. That's around 21% of the height you'll get to on SS2 (probably less than 20%, since I'd imagine they wouldn't stop at 'just' the height required to win the X-Prize; they want 2-3 minutes of freefall)...

You'r talking about being able to see a 9.36 decree arc of the earth's surface (from 70,000 ft) vs a 20.52 degree arc of the earth's surface (from 340,000 ft). And, if my math is correct (though I'm not sure it is... I hate steradians), you can see 2.565 x 10^6 square miles at 70,000 ft, and 6.783 x 10^6 square miles at 340,000 feet.

So, you can see 2.644 times as much of the earth from 340k ft as 70k ft. Never mind the difference in the visible curvature and, the essential part, the black backdrop of space around that curvature.

Either way, $200k per person, per flight, is the 'early adopter' cost. It's not a mass-market cost, because folks like me would never be able to afford a flight at that price. But, if I could get a trip to the moon for that price, even one-way, I'd probably be there in a heartbeat, no matter the loans I'd have to take or stuff I'd have to sell off.

To say that a Mig 29 flight or a Vomit Comet ride are even in the same league as a ride on SS2 is like comparing a Chevy Aveo with a Buggati Veyron. Even the most clueless car magazines aren't dumb enough to try to think that they're in the same class.

Either way, thanks for compelling me into learning all of the spherical geometry that I absorbed through the above exercise!

Let's say there is a huge gap between Rocketplane and
reality. While they may be discussing lots of plans,
the lack fo substantiative engineering demonstration
makes one wonder what is happening with that program.

Things that would show they are on track are

1) Substantial engine firing tests.

2) Delivery of fligthweight structure.

3) delivery of operable flight control software including
an iron-bird flight simulator.

Press releases don't count.

70,000 feet, big whoop. That's around 21% of the height you'll get to on SS2

It's not only less than 20% of the height of SS2, it's only 10,000ft higher than the altitude SS2 is released.

You could get almost the same views from White Knight 2 after it's made the drop.

Press releases don't count.

They do if all you're trying to do is fleece VC's.

Other customer satisfaction considerations...

http://www.space.com/news/050624_space_tourism.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8348834/page/3/

Most professional companies do not highlight their development. The only time a company would want to hit the media with developmental or conceptual ideas is when they are uncomfortable with their "image" or if they want to give a false impression of progress.

Rocketplane may not be able to produce at the end of the day, but 90% of all aerospace programs fail on the drawing board.

I would say that I like the approach that they have of only showing reality and not showing marketing gimmicks where it's obvious that they spent more on design and put no effort in the engineering. The latest onslought from Virgin is definitely marketing gimmick 101.