I am sure most of our readers are not amongst those who can write checks for $200,000 to fly Virgin Galactic a few years from now. The first will be ‘high flyers’ of the sort who always subsidize new market frontiers. They will pay the high price to be early adopters and by doing so they will generate the capital required to lower costs as companies begin to fight for market share. That is capitalism at work and it is just the way we like it.
Markets have a certain ponderous inevitability. They take time. If you have neither the money nor the desire to wait twenty years, there is another option.
At this point I must stop a moment and note that I am on the Board of Directors of the National Space Society (NSS) and have been part of the space activist cadre since Adam first looked up and dreamed of giant space colonies at Lagrange 5. So I really want lots of folk to look at this competition and join in.
This is not a lottery of any kind. The NSS and Virgin Galactic have worked together to make it possible for one person to earn their way onto a SpaceShipTwo flight near the end of the decade. All you have to do is join NSS and work your butt off in the community promoting the future of humans in space. The person who is judged to have done this most successfully will be selected as our Space Ambassador. They will be expected to work even harder at this task upon their return to terra firma.
I will not be signing up myself as I am hoping I will find other ways to earn my way off planet. The point of this initiative is to let folk like you believe you can turn your dreams into reality.
Ad Astra… and next year in L5!
Interesting (once I edited your broken link!)
You are completely correct about early take-up by the well-heeled, leading to further investment and development, resulting in wider adoption.
Those of us old enough to recall the first pocket-sized calculators will be aware of how expensive they were, and the same has been true of all high-tech market areas as well as other arenas.
Personally, I am now too old to go on pioneering space flights, though I am fully supportive of the (actually urgent) need to get some of our human eggs out of this one and only basket named Earth (to paraphrase Bob Silverberg).
See, that’s what you get for being an early adopter. I’d not finished my final edit of the article yet!
I don’t think want to go anywhere cold and cramped, even if there is an atmosphere.
next year in L5
Oh, I love it. See you there.
L’chiem
Tell me again what rewards I can expect to reap from my
diligence, and investment, as a “high flier”.
Fame and beauty are fleeting, even for second generation
“adventurers”, just ask Susan Estrich.
If you don’t know the answer yourself, you are probably happy enough being an earthworm.
Will there be Ferrero Roche at the Space Ambassador’s reception?
Seriously, this is a really great way for the NSS to get a shed load of work done for a miserly $200,000 🙂
And fair play to them on that.
Nick, you must think we have a budget like NASA! We manage to pay two full time staff in DC and that is about it. No, Virgin Galactic is putting up the flight, courtesy of Sir Richard, so that we can help widen public interest in individual space flight. It’s a marvelous case of mutual self-interest. We get to do more of what we have been doing for 30 years, and by doing so we help expand his (and that of the competition to come) potential market. What more could anyone ask for? Oh, and I might add, the folks at VG really believe in the same goals as we do and like the notion of living their dreams and making a few quid at it as well.
I won’t give numbers, but let us just say that would be a substantial fraction of our yearly budget 😉
Dale,
I know the score. It is a great scheme not least because by definition the person who gets the prize will be someone who clearly really, real, real, really wants it.
Home, home on lagrange…
Where the space debris always collects.
We possess, so it seems, two of man’s fondest dreams…