Re: Is Virgin Galactic for Real?

In article <aNZuf.4830$M%4.3872@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" <mooregr_deleteth1s@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> "Von Fourche" <jugjug@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:00Xuf.3146$Hl6.2717@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > Two hundred thousand dollars for six minutes of weightlessness? I bet
> > you can get more weightless time on the Comet Vomit for less that two
> > hundred thousand dollars.
>
> Yes you can. And I can probably get even more if I skydive.

Less than five seconds per jump before you're back in pretty much 1G due
to wind resistance. And only a fraction of that is anything like true
free-fall even if you jump from a balloon. From a plane you're into 60+
mph wind which gives approximately lunar gravity acceleration the
instant you're out the door.

So at $40 a jump, getting 6 minutes of zero-G will cost you as much as a
$4k flight with zerogravity.com, and take much longer and be in much
smaller chunks.

If you don't mind small chunks (heh), I show people 5 - 6 seconds of
zero-G at a time in a glider, with quality good enough to keep a pen or
apple or whatever suspended in mid-cockpit. The guys in the big jets
use the engines to compensate for drag, which a glider can't do. But a
40:1 L/D translates to a 0.025 G acceleration due to drag in level
flight. When the wings aren't generating any lift (and thus no induced
drag) in a zero-G pushover it's more like 0.01 G.

--
Bruce | 41.1670S | \ spoken | -+-
Hoult | 174.8263E | /\ here. | ----------O----------
.

Quantcast