Space tourism, and the unspoken US victory in space

On Wednesday, June 5, 2002, at 07:17 AM, panamabob wrote:

> Can we modify a 727 into becoming a space vehicle? Can a chasis
> designed for
> 600 mph flight do well at 20,000 mph?

No. The hull can't contain the pressure in a vacume, the wings would
rip off during re-entry, and the whole vehicle would melt or vaporize
during re-entry (after the wings ripped off).

Just for a nice reality check on dollars, one production 747 off the
assembly line costs around $180 million.

The materials in one asteroid (the largest ) are sufficient to make
orbital space colonies with ~500 times the surface area of the Earth in
usable real estate. See http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSettlement/
for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html