You could do whatever science a few minutes of weightlessness provides; astronaut training too
It is worth noting that Virgin also operate a separate commercial smallsat launcher company, Virgin Orbital, which uses air-launched rockets, so maybe Virgin Galactic experience helped with that.
Nasa Vomit Comet:
- 25 seconds 0-G at a time, dont know the number or repeats
- $5K per person or $160K for the whole plane
- 15x ~30 seconds
- ~$7K per person
Bezos flight:
- four minutes in zero gravity
- $28 million per person?
Branson:
- no idea, probably even shorter
- $250K?
The premise is inspiration, I think:
> I want people to be able to look back at our beautiful Earth and come home and work very hard to try to do magic to it to look after it.
Perhaps similar to how space-x inspires many of us here. The big difference being Virgin's actual _goal_ is inspiration... which does feel a little artificial I admit.
2. Even if their bid had been successful, the Artemis program has nothing to do with the New Shepard project.
They are almost certain to be one of the winning bidders on NextSTEP-2 Appendix N BAA [0], which is part of the Artemis Program. However, Appendix N is just providing $15 million each of funding to Blue Origin and Dynetics to keep their bids alive for the next phase of the HLS competition. NASA really wants a second HLS provider and they are going to send BO and Dynetics just enough of a trickle of funding to stop them from walking away, until such time as Congress gives NASA enough money to actually pay for one.
Cell phone cameras, the computer program that allowed the development of a bunch of consumer electronics like the dustbuster, memory foam, ear thermometers, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and arachidonic acid (ARA) (used in baby formula), roadway safety grooves, polycrystalline alumina (used in invisible braces, among other things), scratch-resistant lenses, the vertical "winglets" at the end of aircraft wings, cardiac pumps, portable computers, blow rubber molding (eg. from Nike Air sneakers), freeze dried fruit, foil blankets, crystal silicon solar power cells, electrolytic silver iodizers (for water purification), thermoelectric plane wing de-icing, gps without cell signal, aluminized polyester insulation, cochlear implants is in an honorable mention that someone from NASA invented after learning the principles from his time work on space shuttle electronics, wireless headphones, packaged food safety protocols, CAT scans, uv-blocking sunglasses, ski boots, better rubber tires.
Doing what these companies are doing requires all kinds of novel engineering, it would be bizarre that all of it only applies exactly to space tourism and nothing else.
I really don't understand all the cynicism around a private space race considering all the potential good it could do.
The same can be said for getting a man on the moon. But I think that it’s not USA vs USSR but Branson vs Musk vs Bezos that fuels the negativity.
But your points are valid! There are good things coming out of these R&D spenditures.
For instance, SpaceX and the likes already go to space (proper), and the benefits are more obvious.
Just factor in the tax evasion of those flying into space, and the fact that both society and infrastructure is crumbling left and right, then you might get there as well.
Leaving the orbit as a collective effort of humanity to show such a thing is possible is something entirely different to tax evaders doing it for their private pleasure with money they owe to society.
That line of reasoning is deeply flawed, because we would have got this kind of things in a much cheaper way without doing all the senseless space race (especially the one driven by governments) for absolutely no proper reason or vision. At least now with SpaceX there are tons of actual space-related applications, but NASA had none.