We all know that the Alps are beautiful and the Himalayas even more inviting, but I would say the human mind is not limited to these destinations for the world is not enough.
Probably in five years time we may see people packing their bags for ‘better destinations’ than the aforesaid, because they would be destinations , conquered only by the astronauts until date.
Yes, it is as true as the gospel; the European Aerospace company, EADS Astrium, has developed an aircraft that would pick up passengers from regular terminals and take them sailing right into space.
These specially designed airplanes or call them space planes, would resemble a conventional plane but the difference would be the incorporated rocket engines.
Indeed, these planes would behave like the conventional ones till an altitude of 12 km, following which the pilot would activate the ultra touring mode/ overdrive mode, call it whatever , as it will make the plane rocket to an altitude of 60 kms , in just 80 seconds.
Further journey until the destination would be taken care off by the inertia, as the plane would be shut down after the speedy overdrive leaving it onto nature to do the rest.
The passengers wouldn’t have to pack their bags in the real sense as the journey would be a short one, obviously in terms of the time span, not the distance though.
On reaching the destination, the passengers would be able to have a peek at the earth and feel zero gravity for three minutes, the best three minutes of every human’s life for sure.
Such a journey would obviously mean a lot of expenditure both for the company and the travelers; the critics will find a place here too but they can give a little bit of breathing space at least at the advent of this once unfathomable voyage.
This journey would initially be meant for the Baron Roth’s as the tickets would expectedly cost 1, 50,000 to 2, 00,000 Euro.
Before the, ‘don’t count your chickens before they hatch’ notion seems applicable here, the ground reality is that Astrium is hoping that the entire project gets funded before the end of this year and Astrium head Francois Auque believes that they would definitely succeed even from the financial point of view
His level of confidence in this venture can be assed by this citation:
We are counting on some 20,000 space tourists by the year 2020. We want to serve a third of them. We have faith in this market.
This aircraft would be ready by next year but the first passengers looking to peek at the earth from a thousand miles would have to wait until 2012.
Five years is a lot of time to wait and the wait would become longer or rather futile when I know that the only thing I would do at the advent is to jeer as the tickets are priced good enough to make my return journey pointless for I would be seldom left with anything to subside on . But then, one journey like this in a life time and I would not repent loosing it all!
Courtesy :smh.com
