Commercial Spaceship Factory Opens in California

[Hevva]

Commercial Spaceship Factory Opens in California

Your dreams of affordable spaceflight have come one step closer to reality.

Born of a merger between Virgin Galactic and engineering firm Scaled Composites, The Spaceship Company has a straightfoward motto: "We build spaceships." To this end, the company has now announced the completion of its first commercial spaceship factory. The FAITH (Final Assembly, Integration and Test Hangar) spaceship factory cost $8 million to build and is part of the Mojave Air and Space Port, which is still under construction.

Having successfully tested the "feathered flight" techniques used by the inventively-named SpaceShipTwo earlier this year, Virgin Galactic is confident that it'll be able to use the craft to send tourists into suborbit as early as next year. The ships can carry two pilots and up to six people, and apparently feature many windows to ensure that customers get the best view possible while they're brushing against space.

Sadly, even though around $200,000 [http://www.virgingalactic.com/assets/downloads/Virgin_Galactic_Brochure.pdf]. But who knows? Maybe the invisible hands of consumer capitalism will weave their magic throughout FAITH and lower spaceship manufacturing costs to the point where space tourism will become an option for the masses. NASA would probably be happy about it too. A girl can dream, right?


Source: Geek.com [http://www.geek.com/articles/news/8-million-spaceship-assembly-factory-opens-in-the-mojave-desert-20110920/]



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[Vault Citizen]

I agree with Hevva, this makes me a bit more hopeful that one day in the future (when I am an old man but still alive) I might be able to afford space travel.

 

[Beryl77]

Next year already? Wow, I though we'd have to wait until 2020 or something like that. Well that's awesome but as a poor student, I couldn't even afford a rusty bicycle at the moment, let alone a flight to space.
But it does make me hope that the prises will drop sometime in the future and I hopefully, will have enough cash to buy a ticket. Does anyone know how expensive flight tickets were at the beginning?

 

[Cowabungaa]

You call $200.000 expensive? Only a few short years ago, the costs for space tourists where over a million dollars. $200.000 is a steal compared to that.


The speed things are going is just astounding if you ask me, considering the fact that we only achieved flight less than a century ago, and been into space for half a century. Now if the price keeps dropping like that, I can go into space when I'm middle aged or something.

 

[Navenis]

If i ever get a terminal illness i am definitely going up.

 

[Hoplon]

a girl can dream, or marry money.

 

[basm321]

Never in history, from trading berries for furs to exchanging money to buy things on a trip around the world, has anything merited the following statement more.


TAKE MY MONEY! TAKE IT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!

*That is if I had enough

/cry

 

[zfactor]

Or we can build a space elevator wich would be a lot cheaper to ride up in.

But first we need fusion power...

 

[bz316]

This is awesome! Soon other companies offering the same service will pop-up! Competition between them could easily lower the price for a ride into space and offer a quantum leap in space travel propulsion tech R&D as each company tries to offer better services and new locations to travel to! I don't often type these words, but thank the gods for capitalism!

 

[awsome117]

But what will the in flight movie be?

Most likely Apollo 18, 200 A Space Odyssey, Aliens, or any variation of those.

 

[Wintermoot]

But what will the in flight movie be?

"2001 A Space Odyssey" or if your ship is shoddily put together "Apollo 13"
I Wonder how long it,s going to take until we have space pirates?

 

[emeraldrafael]

I could have swore we've been doing this for a few years now. Eh.

if you tihnk about it realistically, 200K USD isnt all that much. Though I wouldnt go. anything with the word virgin in its advertisement has alawys screwed me in the end.

 

[I Max95]

this is awesome!