Suborbital tourism is stepping stone to two hour flights around the world

A DeltaGliderIV within Martin Schweiger's Orbiter Simulator can realistically simulate travel from the Atlantic coast of the United States to the skies over Al Anbar in only 45 minutes. But lining up for a comfortable low-G re-entry and landing requires at least a half orbit line-up. Minimal travel-time from North Carolina's Global Trans-Park to Iraq, for example, would require two hours of flight time; an initial pass over western Russia and India, a re-entry burn over the far South Pacific, encounter with the atmosphere over the Great Plains to eventually slow to Mach 3 west of Baghdad [Orbiter/LP].

FastForward
Hat Tip: Next Big Future

SpaceShipTwo was unveiled Monday and should soon result in thousands of trips from a spaceport to suborbital 60+ mile height and then return to the same launch point for $200,000 per trip.

This is laying the groundwork for global high-speed air and space travel with two hour flights anywhere in the world (where there is a suitable takeoff and landing site).

FastForward's 15 page presentation Getting Faster Point to Point travel is HERE.

Space Neighborhood needs watching

Blind Spots and Fuzzy Vision looking for Near-Earth Asteroids
Next Big Future

From New Scientist, existing sky surveys miss many asteroids smaller than 1 km across, leaving the door open to damaging impacts of Earth with little of no warning, a panel of scientists reports. Doing better will require devoting more powerful telescopes to asteroid hunting, but no one has committed the funds needed to do so, it says

NASA calculated, that to spot the asteroids as required by (Congressional mandate) would cost about $800 million between neo and 2020, either with a new ground-based telescope or a space observation system... If NASA (received) only $300 million, if could find most asteroids bigger than 1000 feet across..."

More from Next Big Picture
Download the Report from NAP.edu, or,
Mirror Site (no registration necessary), HERE.