[This is cool. People are always coming up with something new. This could be cool. But I doubt we can reuse any of the disks or devices we used to access them with. Jan]
Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_yxsJuOMY
Video: Scientists warn of AI collapse
[This is interesting. Jan]
Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcH7fHtqGYM
The Fossils I saw here in South Africa – Amazing Tree Fossils and others
Here in SA, I once went to a farm where there were small footprints in rock from the dinosaur age. It was amazing to see the footprints and how the small lizards’ tails had dragged through what was once clearly some mud by a river or lake. For me the most amazing thing I saw was on the coast near margate where you could see fossilized trees near the beach. Trees that used to exist, but which are now solid rock. I found it amazing, being close up and looking at it. I took many photos. You also get "fossil negatives" where the original thing died and rotted away (e.g. tree trunk) and then rock formed around it. The trees blew my mind – you could see them fallen down and you could even see tree rings. I have the photos.
But, one of the greatest places on earth for fossils is in the semi-desert known as the Kalahari. That used to be a sea bed. some of the wildest craziest fossils ever found were found there including impossible fossils like jelly fish in what is now solid rock. (My suspicion is that this was created through very high speed, intensive catastrophic events).
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VERY IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENT: Scientists closer to finding quantum gravity theory after measuring gravity on microscopic level
[I can't over stress the critical importance of this. This is what we really need and this will lead to unbelievable things. With this we are heading towards the greatest breakthrough since nuclear physics. This is even bigger than that. With this, we can head across the universe. Once we figure out how gravity actually works … insane things will be possible. This is something I've mentioned many times in the past. We need to know HOW gravity actually works. This is the first true breakthrough ever. Jan]
Scientists are a step closer to unraveling the mysterious forces of the universe after working out how to measure gravity on a microscopic level.
Experts have never fully understood how the force that was discovered by Isaac Newton works in the tiny quantum world. Even Einstein was baffled by quantum gravity and, in his theory of general relativity, said there is no realistic experiment that could show a quantum version of gravity.
But now physicists at the University of Southampton, working with scientists in Europe, have successfully detected a weak gravitational pull on a tiny particle using a new technique.
They claim it could pave the way to finding the elusive quantum gravity theory.
The experiment, published in Science Advances, used levitating magnets to detect gravity on microscopic particles—small enough to border on the quantum realm.
Lead author Tim Fuchs, from the University of Southampton, said the results could help experts find the missing puzzle piece in our picture of reality.
He added, "For a century, scientists have tried and failed to understand how gravity and quantum mechanics work together. Now we have successfully measured gravitational signals at a smallest mass ever recorded, it means we are one step closer to finally realizing how it works in tandem.
"From here we will start scaling the source down using this technique until we reach the quantum world on both sides. By understanding quantum gravity, we could solve some of the mysteries of our universe—like how it began, what happens inside black holes, or uniting all forces into one big theory."
The rules of the quantum realm are still not fully understood by science—but it is believed that particles and forces at a microscopic scale interact differently than regular-sized objects.
Academics from Southampton conducted the experiment with scientists at Leiden University in the Netherlands and the Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnologies in Italy.
Their study used a sophisticated setup involving superconducting devices, known as traps, with magnetic fields, sensitive detectors and advanced vibration isolation. It measured a weak pull, just 30aN, on a tiny particle 0.43mg in size by levitating it in freezing temperatures a hundredth of a degree above absolute zero—about –273 degrees Celsius.
The results open the door for future experiments between even smaller objects and forces, said Professor of Physics Hendrik Ulbricht also at the University of Southampton.
He added, "We are pushing the boundaries of science that could lead to new discoveries about gravity and the quantum world.
"Our new technique that uses extremely cold temperatures and devices to isolate vibration of the particle will likely prove the way forward for measuring quantum gravity.
"Unraveling these mysteries will help us unlock more secrets about the universe’s very fabric, from the tiniest particles to the grandest cosmic structures."
More information: Tim Fuchs et al, Measuring gravity with milligram levitated masses, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adk2949. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adk2949
Journal information: Science Advances
Source: https://phys.org/news/2024-02-scientists-closer-quantum-gravity-theory.html
Scientists have a new way to find oceans — and possible alien life — on distant planets
Searching for liquid water on exoplanets is the key to finding life among the stars, and now, scientists have proposed a new strategy that might improve the chances of finding it.
In the new study, published Dec. 28 in the journal Nature Astronomy, researchers hypothesized that if the atmosphere of an exoplanet has less CO2 than its neighbors, there may be vast quantities of water on its surface — or even life.
Currently, finding liquid water on planets outside the solar system is a major challenge. Of the 5,000 or so exoplanets we’ve discovered, liquid water hasn’t been confirmed on any. The best scientists can do is detect traces of water in exoplanet atmospheres and determine whether planets could theoretically support water in the liquid state.
"We know that initially, the Earth’s atmosphere used to be mostly CO2, but then the carbon dissolved into the ocean and made the planet able to support life for the last four billion years or so," study co-lead author Amaury Triaud, professor of exoplanetology at the University of Birmingham in the U.K., said in a statement.
Once carbon is dissolved in the oceans, tectonic activity then locks it away in Earth’s crust, creating an effective carbon sink. This is partly why our planet has significantly lower CO2 levels compared with our neighbors — Earth’s atmosphere is around 0.04% CO2, whereas the atmospheres on Venus and Mars are both over 95% CO2.
If scientists observe a similarly low-carbon atmosphere on an exoplanet, it could indicate the presence of vast oceans similar to our own, the researchers said.
Looking for CO2 is easier than finding liquid water. CO2 absorbs infrared radiation very well, meaning it produces a strong signal that scientists can detect.
It’s also possible to perform this technique with existing telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Ground-based observations should also be possible because of the specific wavelength CO2 is measured at — whereas Earth’s atmosphere can torpedo experiments at other wavelengths by partially absorbing the signals.
"It’s a really nice way of doing this. And it’s also not going to involve a massive investment of telescope time, which is really important because that’s extremely precious to our community," said Sarah Casewell, a lecturer in the school of physics and astronomy at the University of Leicester in the U.K., who wasn’t involved in the research.
Tantalizingly, another scenario could contribute to an atmosphere low in carbon: life itself. The main ways life on our planet captures carbon are through photosynthesis and making shells, and around 20% of all carbon capture on Earth is caused by biological processes.
"Despite much early hopes, most of our colleagues had eventually come to the conclusion that major telescopes like the JWST would not be able to detect life on exoplanets. Our work brings new hope," study co-lead author Julien de Wit, assistant professor of planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in the statement. "By leveraging the signature of carbon dioxide, not only can we infer the presence of liquid water on a faraway planet, but it also provides a path to identify life itself," de Wit said.
JWST found the unambiguous signature of water on exoplanet WASP-96B. A new technique may make it even easier for telescopes like JWST to find water.
Although the approach looks like it’ll work in principle, there may still be hurdles, as it’s not clear how many terrestrial exoplanets also have atmospheres. "Finding the perfect system to test this on might turn out to be a little bit more challenging than we previously thought," Casewell told Live Science.
But as researchers keep discovering more exoplanets, more atmospheres will also be spotted. And this technique could help figure out whether they could sustain life.
Science: 25,000-year-old human DNA discovered on Paleolithic pendant from Siberian cave
Researchers have retrieved human DNA from a Paleolithic pendant and discovered that it belonged to a Siberian woman who lived roughly 25,000 years ago.
This is the first time scientists have successfully isolated DNA from a prehistoric artifact using a newly developed extraction method, according to a study published Wednesday (May 3) in the journal Nature.
In 2019, archaeologists discovered the thumbnail-size pendant buried inside Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in southern Siberia. This cave is famous for once housing Neanderthals, the mysterious Denisovans and even modern humans, according to fossil and DNA evidence. The pendant is further evidence of the cave’s human occupation. Measuring roughly 0.79 inch (2 centimeters) long, the pierced deer tooth contained a single hole, which was likely drilled so that the wearer could hang it around their neck.
Because teeth are highly porous, they’re more likely to retain traces of DNA, such as from skin cells or sweat, compared with other materials, making them a good candidate for the team of international scientists to test the new method. To help "preserve the integrity" of the artifact while isolating the DNA, they designed the method to be nondestructive, according to a statement.
This new technique involved using a soft spatula to carefully remove any leftover sediment from the cave before submerging the artifact into a buffer bath of sodium phosphate, which released the ancient DNA gradually beginning at the surface level and then deeper into the tooth. The researchers then increased the temperature of the liquid incrementally, beginning at room temperature, and swapping out the liquid multiple times until the human and deer DNA were released from the artifact, according to the study.
"The amount of human DNA [recovered] from using this method was mind blowing for me," study author Elena Essel, a doctoral candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told Live Science in an interview. "I expected to only get a bit of human DNA, but we had more than enough to tell the human and animal DNA apart."
A deer tooth with a hole at its top. It sits on a black background next to a ruler.
While Essel said it would take further examinations to know specifically the source of the DNA — be it from sweat, blood or another biological form — the researchers were able to compare it with known human populations and determined that both the woman and the deer, a species of elk (Cervus canadensis) known as wapiti, lived sometime between 19,000 and 25,000 years ago and that the woman was of Siberian heritage.
"Time-wise it fits," Essel said, "and geographically, the location of where the artifact was found fits."
Essel thinks this new method of DNA extraction could potentially be used on a variety of ancient artifacts, including tools, ornaments and other items once touched by humans.
"We think we can extract DNA from all types of artifacts using this method," Essel said. However, it’s important that archaeologists wear proper equipment not just in the lab but during excavations, such as "gloves and masks to avoid cross contamination from their own DNA."
Science: The universe might be younger than we think, galaxies’ motion suggests
The universe could be younger than we think, based on the motions of satellite galaxies that reveal how recently they have fallen into a galaxy grouping.
According to measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) by the European Space Agency’s Planck mission, the universe is about 13.8 billion years old. This calculation is based on what’s known as the Standard Model of cosmology, which describes a flat universe dominated by dark energy and dark matter and which is expanding at an accelerating rate.
The Standard Model is then used as a basis for supercomputer simulations that can depict the growth of large-scale structure in the universe — galaxies, galaxy clusters and huge chains and walls of galaxies.
Canada IMS
However, these models have now run afoul of new measurements of the motions of pairs of galaxies that don’t tally with what the simulations are telling us.
In a new study, astronomers led by Guo Qi from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences studied pairs of satellites in galaxy groups.
Galaxy groups are small collections of galaxies, such as our own Local Group, in which a few large galaxies are joined by a swarm of smaller ones. Like larger galaxy clusters, these galaxy groups form where filaments in the cosmic web of matter that spans the universe meet, with smaller galaxies moving along the filaments before falling into a group.
Using observations made by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) of 813 galaxy groups within about 600 million light-years from Earth, Qi’s team focused on the most massive galaxy in each group and measured how pairs of satellites on opposite sides of that galaxy moved.
They found that the fraction of satellite galaxies that were counter-rotating with respect to each other — in other words, orbiting the large galaxy in opposite directions — is higher than predicted by computer simulations of large-scale structure, such as the Millennium Simulation and the Illustris TNG300 model, which are both based on the Standard Model as described by the Planck mission.
This is a natural state of affairs if the satellites have just fallen into orbit around the larger galaxy of the group. But over time, galaxy groups and clusters should reach a dynamically relaxed state, with most satellites co-rotating. If galaxy groups and clusters coalesced when the Standard Model suggests they should have, then the fraction of counter-rotating satellites should be smaller. The fact that they are a greater fraction of satellites is a problem for the Standard Model.
“We found in the SDSS data that satellite galaxies are just accreting/falling into the massive groups, with a stronger signal of ongoing assembly compared to simulations with Planck parameters,” Qi told Space.com in an email.
In other words, it seems that the satellite galaxies have only recently fallen into their respective groups.
“This suggests that the universe is younger than that suggested by the Planck observations of the CMB,” said Qi. “Unfortunately, this work cannot estimate the age of the universe in a quantitative manner.”
This is because there is still too much leeway in the motions of the satellite pairs and models of how groups form to be able to place a firm figure on how much younger than 13.8 billion years these results suggest that the universe is.
If correct, then the new findings imply that something is amiss in the Standard Model, and that some of our assumptions about the universe must be wrong. In fact, one cosmic paradox that scientists are currently investigating could be the answer.
The expansion rate of the universe is defined by a number called the Hubble constant. Planck measured the Hubble constant to be 67.8 kilometers per second per megaparsec — in other words, every megaparsec volume of space is expanding by 67.8 kilometers (42.1 miles) every second. (One megaparsec is about (3.26 million light-years.) Based on this expansion rate, cosmologists are able to calculate the universe’s age as 13.8 billion years by rewinding the clock.
However, observations of the redshift of Type Ia supernovae, which are exploding white dwarfs, give the value of the Hubble constant as 73.2 kilometers (45.5 miles) per second per megaparsec. With this expansion rate, rewinding the clock would give a younger age of 12.6 billion years.
Both measurements of the Hubble constant are considered to be unimpeachable, and yet they differ drastically. This paradox has become known as the "Hubble tension."
“This of course could be related to the Hubble tension problem,” said Qi when asked whether the younger age suggested by satellite pairs in galaxy groups is support for the faster rate of expansion from the supernova measurements.
However, there are other hurdles to overcome. If we lower the age of the universe too much, then astronomers will find themselves in the awkward position of having stars that are known to be older than the universe itself.
Perhaps the explanation lies with other aspects of the Standard Model. For example, the model is heavily dependent upon dark matter, but so far scientists do not know what dark matter is. Other researchers argue that dark matter does not exist at all, and that its gravitational effects can be explained by a modification of the laws of gravity at low accelerations, such as those experienced by satellite galaxies orbiting at greater distances. Qi’s team did find that satellite pairs at larger orbital radii are more likely to be counter-rotating.
Right now, more data would be welcome. The same phenomenon should hold for larger galaxy clusters, said Qi, but clusters tend to be farther away and the limited sample size and poorer quality of data currently make any measurement inconclusive.
The universe is ancient, whichever age value is correct, but these new results suggest that it may be able to claw some of its youth back.
The new findings were published on Jan. 22 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Source: https://www.space.com/universe-younger-than-thought-galaxy-motion
Video: First Commercial Spacecraft on Moon: US Makes its First Moon Landing in Over 50 Years
[The spacecraft is 14 feet tall. It's quite tall and thin. The Moon's South Pole is pretty special. Since there's no air on the moon the craft will always be stable. Jan]
Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgVWGWEjsks
Video: New Cancer Treatment With Proton Flashes Goes on Trial
Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K515uMQQzV4
BALLOON TO EDGE OF SPACE: Space Perspective is nearly ready to fly tourists on luxury balloon rides near the edge of space
[This is very cool. Balloons can go much higher than aircraft. You will be exposed to a lot of radiation since you're almost in space. Jan]
Ever wanted to see the cosmos, but not too keen on buckling-up for a rocket’s high-g, explosively-controlled ascent into space? You’re in luck: Space Perspective will bring you there in a balloon.
The Titusville, Florida-based company just completed assembly of their first pressure vessel, a test capsule of their Spaceship Neptune that Space Perspective will use as they begin a series of test flights of their trademarked "SpaceBalloon" ascent system. If everything goes smoothly during the vehicle’s shakedown flights, the company hopes to begin flying people to the edge of space as early as the end of this year.
Space Perspective recently unveiled Spaceship Neptune to the public, posting photos of the capsule to X (formerly Twitter). "Introducing Spaceship Neptune – Excelsior, our finished test capsule!," the company wrote in the post. "With the largest windows ever flown to space and a spherical design that allows for the roomiest interior of any human spaceflight capsule ever made"
Space Perspective was founded by CEOs Taber MacCallum and Jane Poynter, who also co-founded Paragon Space Development Corp. Life support and thermal control systems from Paragon have been included in the designs of every human-rated spacecraft the United States has ever flown, and now the duo are using their over 40 years of experience in the aerospace industry to offer people a more accessible way to see the Earth like never before.
"We definitely have the world’s experts doing this," Poynter said in an interview with Space.com. "We are completely focused. We’re focused on getting commercial flight as efficiently and completely safely and quickly as we can."
Space Perspective has named their first Spaceship Neptune capsule Excelsior, in a nod to a high-altitude balloon flight program known as Project Excelsior, pioneered by Joe Kittinger in the late 1950s.
Excelsior weighs just over seven tons, and will be lifted to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere by a balloon that stretches more than 600 feet (183 meters) tall.
Unlike other crew-rated spacecraft, designed and shaped for a fiery atmospheric re-entry, Excelsior’s carbon fiber shell was built in the shape of a sphere, measuring 16 feet (4.9 meters) in diameter.
The interior design of the crewed Spaceship Neptune model includes accommodations for eight passengers, or "Explorers," as Space Perspective calls their customers, and a captain to serve as host for the luxurious lift to the top of the world. Inside the capsule, cushioned chairs sit in short rows on opposite sides, facing outward to view the planet through the vessel’s tall windows. The central area of the capsule is mostly empty, allowing passengers some room to stretch their legs, and includes a bar station and even a bathroom, which Space Perspective refers to as a "spa."
The "Spa" will be a refuge of sorts for passengers on Space Perspective’s Spaceship Neptune capsule. (Image credit: Space Perspective)
Excelsior is outfitted with far less luxury, but has been manufactured to pave the way for Space Perspective’s future crewed flights. Nearly every component inside and outside the test capsule has been connected to racks of sensors and strain gauges to capture every detail of data during the vehicle’s first flights.
One of Spaceship Neptune’s most complex features is the radiator system that sits like a cap on top of the capsule and helps mitigate the effects of the high levels of solar radiation the capsule will experience while hanging at high altitudes, exposed to the sun and unshielded by the atmosphere. The spacecraft’s heat regulation is also aided in part by the unique design of the capsule’s windows, which reflect much of the harmful UV wavelengths without compromising the view.
At the bottom of the capsule, a splash cone serves to stabilize and anchor the vessel after landing, which occurs at sea. To prevent the same phenomenon that causes a droplet shooting up from a body of water as an object plunges through its surface, Spaceship Neptune’s splashdown is stabilized by the conical device, which prevents that bounce-back effect and works as an anchor on the capsule as its passengers await retrieval.
Trips aboard one of Space Perspective’s balloon rides begin and end at sea, taking off from the deck of the company’s launch boat, Voyager. The ship is designed to carry up to two Spaceship Neptune capsules, and the company has plans to construct several capsules to offer their services from launch boats harbored across the world.
Full flight duration, including ascent and descent takes about six hours, and can move the capsule several hundred miles downrange from its liftoff point. Because of this, Space Perspective uses separate recovery vessels to retrieve landed capsules within about 15 minutes of splashdown. Amidst Space Perspective’s stacked house of experts, the same engineers who designed the Dragon recovery system for SpaceX’s boats Bob and Doug are responsible for the recovery hardware aboard Space Perspective’s boats for retrieving Spaceship Neptune.
Also like SpaceX’s Dragon, Spaceship Neptune capsules are designed to be reusable and are flown mostly autonomously. Or, the capsule can be operated remotely from Space Perspective’s mission control room, housed in one of the company’s three adjacent facilities in Titusville. Though navigational controls are limited in balloon flights, mission operators are able to monitor flight status conditions and intervene in the vehicle’s ascent and descent when needed. Flight captains are able to access those same systems onboard, and can also take control in the event of some kind of emergency, which the company has gone to great lengths to avoid.
Unlike the reusable capsules, Space Perspective’s SpaceBalloons are one-time-use. Each balloon is stitched together by hand, using load-bearing tape and carbon filaments to prevent tears. Assembly takes place inside a 700-foot (213-meter) long, white soft-top hangar next to the company’s mission control building, where materials are laid down piece by piece, and joined to form Spaceship Neptune’s massive lifting medium.
Right now, Space Perspective’s balloon hangar fits two rows of tables, each with its own balloon under assembly. Once in commercial operation, the company hopes to reach a production point of one balloon per table, per week, amounting to over 100 flights per year.
At launch, the balloon is pumped with buoyant hydrogen, which slowly fills the volume and floats the towering canvas to begin carrying its capsule for flight.
Like the lines on a basketball or beach ball, individual sections known as gores stripe the seams of the SpaceBalloon and reinforce its structural integrity to mitigate risk in the event of an unlikely tear. Should such an emergency arise, the 184 gores ribbed vertically around the balloon work as stops, preventing a tear from spreading. The sheer size of the balloon also means that it is able to maintain some stability in-flight, even if a small tear has formed.
However, in the event of a catastrophic emergency and complete failure of the balloon, supports connected to the capsule are equipped with parachutes to facilitate a slow, safe return to the surface.
An orange-haired woman and grey-bearded man stand peering through the open panel of a window port on a orbulous white capsule with tall, silver-trimmed windows.
Space Perspective Founders and CEOs Jane Poynter and Taber MacCullum peer through the window or Spaceship Neptune’s first completed test vehicle. (Image credit: Space Perspective)
On the other side of mission control, another building houses the hanger for Spaceship Neptune, which recently completed assembly ahead of its first test flights. In a social media post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the company shared photos of the newly-polished Excelsior, including an image with company founders Poynter and MacCullum leaning through one of the capsule’s open window ports.
Why balloons?
"We’re going to be taking unprecedented numbers of people to space. Instead of using rockets, we use space balloons. Balloons, and space balloons are … they just afford this incredibly gentle flight. Right? There’s no high gs. There’s no zero-g, which for a lot of people is really disorienting. There’s no training, none of that.
So, if you can get on a commercial airplane, you can get on Spaceship Neptune. That actually opens up the market enormously to people who otherwise don’t feel comfortable going on a rocket, or just simply can’t go on a rocket, but still want that extraordinary experience of seeing our Earth from space."
What’s it take to run a flight like this?
The Space Perspective mission control room features several stations for monitoring flight status, weather and atmospheric conditions, and communication between Spaceship Neptune, its launch vessel and the recovery boat.
"We are about to enter a rigorous set of test flights. You see so many stations here [in mission control], because it’s engineers that are sitting in a lot of these because they’re monitoring their own systems during the flights … Part of the protocol is to have the spaceship [experience] faults, so that we can test all the backup systems. So, we have seats filled with a lot of engineers. When we get to commercial flight, there’ll be a lot fewer people. You don’t need it, because remember this spacecraft can fly itself. Of course we have complete control of it from mission control as well. And there’s also a mission control on the ship Voyager."
When do you expect to fly the first crewed tests of Spaceship Neptune, and when do you plan to fly aboard?
"My entire career has been in spaceflight and almost exclusively in human spaceflight, which is an incredible privilege to be able to be on that journey. I am undoubtedly going to be on one of the first, if not the first human flight that we do. You’ve got to believe it. If for no other reason than I actually do need to know that we have dialed-in this experience for our customers. I mean, our customers have high expectations of this flight, and we want to have not only that incredible view of the Earth be mind blowing, but the entire experience be that for our customers.
"We’re planning to have crewed flights this year. We’re going to go through a whole series of uncrewed test flights. We have to get through safety gates before we ever put a person in it. However, the current plan is that we do roughly 10 flights uncrewed, and then we have a series of flights that are crewed, and then we get into commercial operations around the end of ’24, early ’25."
According to a recent Space Perspective release, the company currently has more than 1,750 ticket holders who have reserved seats aboard Spaceship Neptune, and the expects that number to reach 4,000 by the end of the year.
What can Space Perspective "Explorers" expect from the experience?
A typical flight lasts six hours – two hours to ascend, two hours hovering at apogee, and then a two-hour descent.
"We launch from a ship, and we splash in the ocean.
So, imagine this, you get up early in the morning, maybe you slept overnight on the ship. You get up, it’s dark out, you step into this beautifully appointed, very comfortable capsule. You’re handed your beverage of choice as you sit down and strap yourself in for about the first 15 minutes of flight. So, when the spaceship is released from the deck, there’s a 600-foot tall balloon standing up above you. The entire vehicle very gently lifts off the deck. It’s going to space at 12 miles an hour. This is literally the opposite of rocket flight. It’s very slow, so it’s takes you two hours to get up there, but that’s also part of the beauty of this – it’s that you can take it all in and you’re not having to withstand all [physical exertions associated with rocket launches], which some people love, but not everybody.
So it takes you a couple of hours to get up there, then you’ll start to see the sunrise over the horizon, the curved horizon of our planet. And then you’ll see the thin blue line of atmosphere against that stark blackness of space, and the sun in the black sky and it’s just going to be mind blowing for people. If you’ve talked to astronauts, you hear about what’s often called the ‘overview effect,’ it is transformational for a lot of people. So we are giving people a lot of time to be up there – a couple of hours – so they can really absorb this experience, celebrate with a drink from our bar of whatever beverage you would like to have. Of course there will also be food along the way, and we have a loo and Wi-Fi so you can be telling everybody back home what’s going on during your flight.
Then there’ll be a two hour journey back down – splashdown in the ocean, a super safe way to do this. So you go up under the balloon and down under the balloon. No transfer to another kind of flight vehicle, which makes it a seamless experience and super safe. Another ship is right there, picks the capsule up out of the water, puts it on the deck. Everybody disembarks within about 15 minutes of splash."
Tickets for a ride to the edge of space aboard Space Perspective’s Spaceship Neptune currently cost $125k, but Poynter says the company has plans to make that price more accessible.
"In the future, we have plans to build a larger capsule for more people so that we can offer both a more exclusive experience with a smaller group of people, and then for larger groups of people at probably a reduced price. Somewhere well below $100,000."