When has tourism become the only reason to fly suborbital?

This may be an answer:
http://borazon.biography.ms/
http://www.chem.wisc.edu/~ellis/People/ ... razon.html

Boron is also useful as an ultra high density fuel.
With new gas deposition methods--remember that Space Daily article with the superdiamond?--perhaps Borazon can be made in larger quantaties.
Scientists at the Geophysical Laboratory of The Carnegie Institute in Washington and produced a chunk of solid yellowish hydrogen that was as crystalline as sugar, as dense as rubies--inside a pressure chamber at 360 kilobars--but at room temperature.

1000 kilobars is needed for the substance to set where it can remain solid in the ambient sea-surface pressure --accordong to Charles Panati's book Breakthroughs published in 1980. A recent SCI AM artical also spoke about metallic hydrogen.

Probably not good with hot oxygen--but it could be useful as strap-on booster supports that could flash away as steam--no more bolt-catchers!

the ultimate ablative material

What does all this have to do with the initial post and its title of 109Ace and with the title of this section "Financial Barriers to Space Travel"?

It seems to be possible to translate nearly all into units of money and this way to costs and financial requirements. This I would be interested in and in basing further posts on it.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Because development of a cost-effective materials is a barrier to hypersonic travel (Which for all intents and purposes, is a kind of space travel). Heatsinks, and new ablative materials are just some ways of dealing with that. There hasn't been a lot of work on this.

If you had been paying attention, Ekke, there was talk about materials just before my post that I was responding to. Enough with jumping down throats for a harmless aside.

You are just being difficult again.

Materials have engineering/technological/technical properties and they have economical properties as there are costs of their production, prices etc. which al has to be financed - and this is the Financial Barriers section.

The thread had started to be looking technological which should be avoided here. But if the technological sight is used to estimate costs etc. then it would be right.

Because this is the Financial Barriers section the focus of threads and posts here should be on Economics, financial ressources and requirements, funds, costs, prices, demand, market competition and the like.

This means to be on topic but not to be "difficult" - it simply is required to switch the focus from technology/Engineering to Economics. Mostly this is done here.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

what about a scaled-up version of the X-15? Somehow they solved all this heating issues. remember folks, we're not coming back from orbit here. Mach 6 is plenty fast, if you extend the burn time during the 'flat' part of the trajectory of a hypersonic cruiser.
Btw, you can talk about anything you want as long as it relates to the topic of suborbital hops between cities. This thread was not initially placed in the "Financial Barriers to Space Travel" section.

Hello, 109Ace,

I don't mention title, section and topic to ride principles - the reasons are quite practical reasons.

The title of the thread as well as the contents of initial post from my point of view have economical contents fitting into this section - Financial Barriers. Titles always are meant to indicate what the focus of the contents is on - it is very disappointing and dissatisfying to find something quite different than the expected and in that moment interesting contents then. Some people might feel "betrayed" a little bit.

On the other hand that portion of contents which doesn't fit into the expections the title is causing may be very interesting too - but a lot of people don't find it - simply because they don't suppose to find such a contents under that title. And especially contents of technological kind won't be found because it is supposed to be in the Technology section.

So interesting contents simply is hidden in such a case - which is not kind and not polite.

This would be valid too if such a thread or really this thread would be in the Technology section.

For this reason it is by far better to keep technological contents, financial contents etc. apart by two different threads each in the according section and then providing a link to the other thread.

I myself tend to do so consciously. I restrict a little bit mixing to explain reasons for my doing - for example I remember that I had to explain why I was discussing several alternative technologies in parallel one of which was not as optimal as the others. In that case I explained that it had economical reasons, what reasons they were and why. Then I moved away from this back to the technologies again.

I moved a lot of threads a few months ago because I have been looking for some and couldn't find them - simply because they weren't in the according and appropriate section.

These are public talks here - please don't behave as if they were private and no other were reading or "listening". I don't have in mind something awful - I want to keep oversight and orientation for the public. And the number of readers and registered people is growing.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

I know this isn't the appropriate forum to make suggestions, but maybe the section "Financial Barriers to Space Travel" should be renamed "Financial Issues of Space Travel"

just my 2 centimes