When will I be able to buy a personal spacecraft?

[Will]

Any thoughts as to when personal spacecrafts will hit the market.

[C1ay]

Any thoughts as to when personal spacecrafts will hit the market.

 

With a sufficient offer you might be able to get a copy of SpaceShipOne from Scaled Composites now.

[Will]

wow.. that's pretty cool.

 

but any thoughts as to when its regular?? 100 years? 300 years? longer?

[C1ay]

wow.. that's pretty cool.

 

but any thoughts as to when its regular?? 100 years? 300 years? longer?

 

I'd guess less than 50 years. It's really available now for a price which will only come down as time moves on.

[Will]

but in 50 years you don't imagine it'll be that common...

[Queso]

i do.

think about this will:

 

all the technology ever created will DOUBLE in the next 5 years.

and then that technology, will double AGAIN 5 years after that.

 

we are going to see some pretty amazing things.

[Fishteacher73]

I'm still waitin' on one of them there facncy horseless carriages.

[Will]

i do.

think about this will:

 

all the technology ever created will DOUBLE in the next 5 years.

and then that technology, will double AGAIN 5 years after that.

 

we are going to see some pretty amazing things.

 

i understand that technological improvements increase at an amazing rate. when you compare how long it took humans to make some advancements thousands of years ago to advancements we've made over the last hundred years it is very shocking.

 

and of course the technology we've made over the last 20 years is allowing us to produce new technologies even faster. it's really cool! but i still don't see the world changing as quickly. It's 2005 and while a lot has changed since 1995, i don't know that 50 years is enough for us to start seeing personal spacecraft as common.

[Queso]

will:

march 24 2055 come back to hypography and we'll discuss it. because right now it seems so hard to believe, you never know though.... :)

[Will]

alright. i'll make a note of that in my calendar... but i may need a reminder closer to the date. :)

[whoa182]

Probably at the time of ' mature nanotech ' around 2020-2030 ..

 

Materials become inexpensive... nearly everything will be automated. If we make the Nano Assembler a reality then we could see star ships haha :)

 

Also if you look at ray Kurzweil models then things will change quite rapidly.

 

He says that in the first 25 years of the 21st century we will see as much progress that was made in the whole of the 20th century at today rate of progress and because the rate of progress is actually changing we will experience 25,000 years of technological progress in the whole of the 21st century...

 

Hes actually put a lot of DATA into his models too... And I have respect for the guy because hes no loon

[Qfwfq]

It's really available now for a price which will only come down as time moves on.

For the price to really come down the price of energy would have to come down. Before traffic starts to increase, we also ought to worry about better energy sources with less environmental impact.

[C1ay]

For the price to really come down the price of energy would have to come down. Before traffic starts to increase, we also ought to worry about better energy sources with less environmental impact.

 

Yep, at today's prices you can bet I'm not going to go burn up a quick trip to the edge of space. Hydrogen peroxide is one of the more common liquid fuels used for space flight currently and is a lot cleaner than hydrocarbons. I did see a recent article that suggested increasing quantities of perchlorates in the envorinment though as a result of using them for spaceflight in solid fuel engines. I can envision the use of electrical energy for ground travel but haven't been able to imagine how it could be used to produce thrust for flight. I think heavy flight will be limited to combustion processes for propulsion for some time to come yet. Hydrogen is the only claen combustion fuel I know of and so far it is expensive to produce. Maybe porphyrin tubes will pan out.

[Jay-qu]

Take flying as an example. The first sustained flight was in 1903, these days you can pick up your own cesner 4 seater plane for under $100k(aus). That only took 100 years.

The first manned space flight was in 1961, so 50+ years is a fair estimate.

A little work needs to be done on the price, Dennis Tito payed $20million(US) for a 1 week holiday and at the same time became the first space-tourist!

[Qfwfq]

Watch out for extrapolations Jay-Qu, you can't always go by them.

 

Hydrogen peroxide: certainly useful in rocket propulsion but you need a combustible as well. I quite agree about hydrogen being clean. The cost of it in quantity is the energy needed to extract it from water, equal to the energy it will give plus losses. It boils down to producing the energy for hydrogen production.

[Jay-qu]

Yeah, true that... but it hope it works this time

 

So what do you see as the most promosing non-combustion propoltion system that may one day power our spacecraft?

[infamous]

Yeah, true that... but it hope it works this time

 

So what do you see as the most promosing non-combustion propoltion system that may one day power our spacecraft?

 

Inertial Space Drive; Sometimes refered to as gravity drive, inertial space drive has great promise for the propulsion of space craft. Now all we need to to is figure out how to make it work. To date this problem has not been solved, but I'm hopeful that new advances in this technology will produce a solution.