Take Me Out to the Black

Volvo will be launching a contest, starting wtih a commercial slated to run during the Super Bowl, with a trip to space (once Virgin Galactic is up and running some 2-3 years hence) as the prize.

Comments

[DaveInBigD]

For those who are curious about Julian's pop-culture references, "Take Me Out to the Black" is a reference to the cancelled Fox show "Firefly", (by Buffy creator Joss Whedon) slated to be resurected on the big screen this coming fall.

The series had a good refusenik - if not strictly libertarian - sensibility.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

This is an interesting prize, since it takes a certain amount of resolve to bust through the atmosphere in a can.

I, for one, have a hard enough time getting on an airplane. There is no fucking way I am getting on a spaceship for "fun".

[Adam]

No purchase necessary? I'm so in.

[SPD]

...and Whitey The Contest Winner's on the moon...

[Mo]

I am SOOOOOOOO in. Why do they have to advertise during the Super Bowl. The fewer people that enter, the better my odds. Damn you and your "marketing" promotion Volvo.

[Akira MacKenzie]

"Take me out to the black,
tell 'em I aint comin' back.
Burn the land and boil the sea,
you can't take the sky from me."

It sounds like a great idea, but first Virgin has to deliver. Frankly it sounds a bit too much like Pan Am's 1960s PR stunt to book passengers for their future spaceline (playing on their product placement in "2001: A Space Odessey"). Of course, Pan Am went the way of Frank Poole and we're still waiting for commerical space lines.

Maybe I'm being a bit cynical.

[db]

As long as Volvo doesn't insist on a level of safety consistent with their famously protective automobiles, this could happen.

[mtc]

Marginal Revolution had a pretty devestating take down of space tourism a few months back (can't find the post).

Basically, it's way too fucking dangerous. You can probably put tourists in space one or twice, or even a hundred times, but rocketry being what it is, you're pretty quickly going to have an accident and everyone is going to die and no one is ever going to book one of your tours again. I think the odds of dying on a given spaceflight are like 1 in 100. Think of any other human activity, no matter how extreme, what else has that shitty odds per execution? Who the hell is going to insure such a venture?

Not me.

I'm still hoping.

[Geddy Lee]

mtc

the meek shall inherit the earth

[Pro Libertate]

Geddy,

Take off, you hoser.

[Thomas Ware]

In Heinlein's (Robert A.) future history, Volvo played a big role in the privatization of space, eventually manufacturing "personal spacecraft" (cars). Notably The Cat Who Walked Through Walls.

[To the Moon, Alice!]

MTC said:
"I think the odds of dying on a given spaceflight are like 1 in 100. Think of any other human activity, no matter how extreme, what else has that shitty odds per execution? Who the hell is going to insure such a venture?"

You are describing the first decade of maned flight, 1903-1913. The carnage in those early days was appalling. Yet, the brave and the romantic kept trying to perfect aircraft, and soon we found novel economic uses for aircraft, including tourism, that no one with a brain would have touched during those early years.

A few years ago, I saw a lecture by Burt Ruttan (the guy who won the X-prize last year) where he laid this out. He pointed out how dangerous early aircraft were, but with thousands of enthusiasts around the globe experimenting, we soon zeroed in on what works. The eraly aeronautic community sorta resembles today's open source computing.

Ruttan then wondered why spaceflight is still mired in those first-decade blues, 4 decades along. His answer is that there is no environment to allow for multitudes of individual concerns to experiment. This is for a pair of reasons: the huge apparent R&D cost, and the fact that governments have cornered the market on spaceflight services. Simply put, there is very little market for a fledgeling spaceflight concern to operate in. Governments already provide an adequate service for getting satellites into orbit, so who wants to take a chance with on the new guy? And since there is very little market for the new guy to sell his wares, who wants to invest in the new guy to develop a new spacecraft in the first place? In short, the spacecraft industry was strangled in its cradle by governments. Ruttan said, if government had taken over airflight the way they'd taken over spaceflight, we'd still think of open-cockpit biplanes as state of the art.

Anyway, the only open market for the innovative spacecraft maker is tourism. So Ruttan and Branson are going after it. I'f they can get the cost down to $10K per passenger per flight, I'll be a customer.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Is there going to be a "McGovern for President" bumper sticker on the spaceship?

[Mr. Nice Guy]

"He pointed out how dangerous early aircraft were, but with thousands of enthusiasts around the globe experimenting, we soon zeroed in on what works."

TMA: Though I appreciate your optimism, I think the big difference between those early, rugged years, and today, is that people back then took much more personal responsibility. Today, we live in the era of pussies. If a tourist ship went down, the company would be sued out of existence. All the mad mothers would be marching in DC screaming bloody murder, and Big Nanny will decide for all of us that space travel is too dangerous for us mere civilians.

[To the Moon, Alice!]

Mr. Nice Guy observed:
"Today, we live in the era of pussies."

Agreed. 🙁

I think the private launch capability will end up being offshored, for this very reason. If we want to go to space, we will need to travel to some place like Ecuador first. They may not be so quick to sink a new industry, and may actually put in place some legal protections, such as the novel concept that a waiver is legally binding.