Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/13/virgin-galactic-officially-fli.html
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3 Likes
It really shouldn’t count unless you enter orbit.
8 Likes
50 miles isn’t high enough to feel like you can float around right? That’s my definition of entering space. If you can’t float around a bit then what is the point?
6 Likes
I leave orbit daily, with a little help from Mother Nature. And I might add no person ever died falling from their sofa.
18 Likes
Free fall hasn’t got anything to do with altitude. Gravity is almost as strong at the ISS as on the ground. You feel weightless when you are in free fall, and you can get that feeling in an amusement park with a free fall tower (although not for very long). With a good pilot you can get longer free fall in an airplane so you don’t have to go to space:
In this case, as soon as the rocket turn off the engine you are in free fall.
18 Likes
Of course you will have deceleration caused by the atmosphere so this is much easier to do where there is none (for example there is a lot of acceleration involved in coming back from space with no rocket engine firing at all).
3 Likes
Well, I don’t think it should count unless you dock at a Lagrange point.
8 Likes
People have jumped from balloons at almost that height.
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I’m sure if I search the internet I’ll find at least one story of some poor soul who’s succumbed to a freak sofa accident…
Wait! Here’s one! (CAUTION! Daily Mail link follows!)
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This sounds like good fun for the very rich, and an opportunity to spend some of that money that just keeps piling up.
8 Likes
This time of year all that money can get cold and feel unloved if it isn’t constantly moving between rich hands. Just make sure no one else gets to touch their money, it might get germs on it. Flu season, you know.
8 Likes
Put in terms a Douglass Adams fan could appreciate, free fall in orbit is basically what happens when you throw yourself toward the ground… but miss.
15 Likes
I Googled Felix Baumgartner to find something clever to embed…but that middle video tho…
5 Likes
Don’t be a buzzkill, bro.
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I thought the modern definition of space was 100 km?
Also:
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43 choked on a pretzel.
I’m quite sure that my couch outright attacked me once or twice.
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Then they can all make instagram posts about how their viewpoint pressed home how precious the Earth is and that we all need to conserve nature.
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Hence why Spaceship 1 had registration 328KFT, to indicate the boundary of space at 100km (328,000 feet)
6 Likes
That’s cute.
3 Likes
What an age we live in!
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