Quote:
Originally Posted by FNG1
Now what you guys think should be the background of those astronaut pilots?...........engineers, military, airlines.......a combination?.......
That's a great question. I am getting a degree in aerospace engineering. I recently went to a talk by Scott Carpenter (one of the original seven Mercury Astronauts). He is one of the 17 astronaut alums we had graduate from Colorado. After giving a great talk and telling some awesome stories about being a test pilot in the old days, we began talking about NASA's current plans to return to the moon and go to mars.
NASA believes it is much easier to take someone with the education from an engineering degree and make them into a pilot, rather than the other way around. We kind of debated this. Personally, I think astronauts should be sharp and smart military test pilots. If anything ever goes wrong (Apollo 13), I would much rather have a military test pilot handling the situation. But apparently NASA is seeking education (like PHD level) over flying experience.
As for Virgin Galactic, losing a space ship one is not nearly as bad as losing the space shuttle!! So Virgin could probably get away with not using the best and the brightest pilots. Personally, I think they should have very stringent requirements to apply, and even more strigent training guidelines. Something like 10 years with Virgin, a minimum of 10,000 flight hours, minimum of 5,000 hours PIC, a college degree in engineering, and be in top notch physical shape.
I am very surprised at this whole Virgin Galactic venture. You pay $200,000 for about 5 minutes of weightlessness. Personally, I would rather rent a vomit comet for the day. I think they will do decent at first as the vastly rich pay for a short period of time to get into space. However, once these people have taken the ride, I don't see this catching on big time.
I am also really surprised that they decided not to make Spaceshipone a staged rocket!
Using some basic numbers I dug up, they could have gotten an extra 1000mph by using a two stage rocket with the same amount of propellent!! Space is considered anything above 100,000m. One the first flight, Spaceshipone made it to something like 100,130m. They barely made it. They only had 3 and 1/2 minutes of weightlessness. That extra 1,000mph could have been critical.