Pedantic, I know, but still oddly intriguing to me. The fact that such a legacy organization like the FAA has to stretch to fit into this business space is interesting to me.
Just try launching/landing a space vehicle without informing air controllers in any country with a functioning government. I'm pretty sure black helicopters would be near you in minutes, and stern-faced guys in battle gear would start yelling questions.
It rather sounds like a joke. Like a license to drink.
Considering a loose estimate on the value of the asteroid belt is like $5(10^20), it could literally be a new gold rush. It would be awesome (to the true definition of the word) if one day our manufactured goods are being landed from space rather than shipped across the ocean.
Beyond that, I envy my offspring that could one day live in space as if it were mundane.
Barring a machine intelligence explosion in the next half-century, we'll probably be getting to orbit on rockets.
Nitrous oxide and methane are two big greenhouse gasses. So to get to space, we're going to have to dump a whole lot more of this stuff into the atmosphere.
Note, I haven't run the numbers, so I may well sound like an idiot by noon.
Also, remember that one of the things a practical commercial space program will do is start mining the asteroid belt for rare earth metals, many of which are needed for green technologies. For instance, one problem with fuel cells is that there isn't enough platinum on Earth to make them for everybody. It is not hard to spin the math such that private spaceflight could be one of the greenest things to ever happen to industry. (And I felt I should be honest about the word "spin", but there is a truth there too. One must make full accountings to decide whether something is good, not count up the costs, ignore the benefits, and make grand pronouncements.)
What I mean to say is, if past experiences are any indicator, supposing we push on into space, carbon footprints will probably become a concern of the past- most likely due to some development we couldn't possibly have foreseen from our current vantage point. (what 1800's coal plant worker could have foreseen nuclear reactors?)
No. Although they're technically impressive, they have spent defense contractor amounts of money to get where they are today. There's almost no chance that this will help the general population get into space, except perhaps by testing the regulatory system.
Check out XCor, Masten, Armadillo, Scaled Composites if you're interested in personal access to space.
> hey are one of the few companies I can get honestly excited about these days.
Agreed.
