British Man Trades Frequent Flyer Miles for Space Shot 130
lvmoon writes "Start saving up your airline miles. Alan Watts, a British businessman, was able to use his 2,000,000 frequent flyer miles for a space flight, a ticket aboard a 2009 Virgin Galactic space flight." From the article: "Electrician Alan Watts said he flew to and from the United States on Virgin Atlantic flights more than 40 times in the past six years, earning him enough miles to take the trip into space with Virgin's space wing, London's The Sun newspaper reported Friday. The trip cost 2 million frequent flier miles, compared to the 90,000 miles required for a first-class flight from London to New York." Besides being funny, does this say anything about space travel in the 21st century? Is space is no longer the final frontier? I'm pretty sure Roddenberry didn't have frequent flier miles in mind when he came up with the Enterprise.
Hyperinflation in the Airmiles currency (Score:5, Interesting)
He's lucky too because he's got this free ticket in before the much expected hyperinflation in the air-miles currency.
This surprises some people but in fact, air-miles are a form of currency. They can be exchanged for real world goods and services and therefore have an intrinsic real world value. The problem is that the vast majority of air-miles go unspent. Since a constantly increasing amount of currency is chasing a limited amount of goods the value of the currency is constantly falling.
The fact that this guy was able to accrue two million air-miles doing a normal job tells you that inflation has already crippled the currency. I soon expect air-miles to be practically worthless.
Simon
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Re:Hyperinflation in the Airmiles currency (Score:5, Informative)
At two million frequent flier miles for a $200k ticket, they gave him ten cents value a piece today, as well. I haven't looked, but I would guess the cost to buy miles hasn't changed either (or even kept pace with inflation). What has changed is discount airlines pulling prices down, so the disconnect between the price you're "paying" for FF miles and the vlaue you get back isn't as good since its trivial to find non-peak price seats on flights.
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I disagree (Score:2)
But that's a bogus comparision: Frequent flyer miles can't be redeemed to get the equivalent of the highest avavilable fare for that
seat type. They can only be redeemed to get the junk seats that are left over on the unpopular schedules, usually on an indirect
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Thanks for the expanded perspective on frequent flyers.
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I disagree. Once a mile is spent, it ceases to circulate in the system.
Similarly, miles are created only when money is spent on a ticket, roughly on scale with the value of the ticket. One would expect that the price of the ticket includes a profit margin that can be applied towards any miles which are redeemed.
Further, the cost of goods sold (at least for profitable compan
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Furthermore, miles don't have a 100% return rate just like retail/restaurant gift cards don't have a 100% return rate.
Someone I consult with owns a few restaurants and offer gift cards. The return rate is 65-70%.
Some of the
1. Open Restaurant
2. ??????
3. Sell gift cards
4. Profit!!!
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Aren't they already worthless?
At least for the states, you can only use them within the continental US, you can only use them when it's not busy or overbooked, you can't reserve seats with them and have to use them on no-shows. You may be lucky and be able to use them internationally only on certain dates.
To me at least, it's far better to spend $50-$600 on a ticket than to deal with the hassle of those rules.
I friend and I were meeting in Hawaii a couple
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Starting December 31, 2006, we're modifying the above policy and miles will expire after two years of account inactivity. Mileage balances of members who have had no SkyMiles activity within the last two calendar years (2005 and 2006) will expire on Dec. 31, 2006.
And Delta was the airline that wouldn't let my friend use miles to fly to Hawaii.
American Airlines:
As of January 1, 2000, if your account has no qualifying activity in any 36-month period, all mileage credit in the account will expire
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I bet he asked his airline team 'who has the most airmiles?' and set the tarrif at that price point.
Chance to shoot for a ride to space??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, instead of making fun of his name, his parents, his loong nose and cribbing about Virgin, let us behave like adults and congratulate him for being the first tourist to exchange miles for space. (literally).
Way to go Watts !
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I want to know if they will give him frequent flyer points for the Virgin Galactic flight.
Calculated vertically, of course.
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50 vertical miles or so? That wouldn't count for much.
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The last thing you want after spending 50 weeks a year out of town is to be more out of town. No matter how cool the place that you are going to is. Midnight flights, the disruption of your home life, the fact you don't actually get
Uhm... he did more than fly... (Score:3, Interesting)
Considering a circumnavigation of the equator is only 25k miles and London->Los Angeles is only about 5500 miles, it would take a LAX-LHR round-trip every two weeks without fail for six years to truly earn all that in real air miles. Obviously dude got most of that mileage by racking up credit-card miles as no sane person, regardless of business requirement, would keep up a travel schedule that ridiculous for that long without a break.
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There's things like bonus miles... you know fly right now and earn 10x the air miles! Plus yeah then there's ways to earn air miles by purchasing things.
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Try http://www.flyertalk.com/ [flyertalk.com]. Some of those people fly that much just to earn the miles.
By around the fifth round trip he'd earn elite status
Easy (Score:2)
But than i looked into the papers of my airline, and there is TONS of stuff that boosts the miles.
Going first class? ==miles*5
Spending money for extra stuff(reservations, ect)? +xk miles bonus
using a senator card? Getting miles shoved into your ass for sneezing (figurtively spoken. IIRC, the highest bonus multipliers were like 10 or 15 or so. Like a pinball machine)
Electritian named Watts (Score:1)
"The Sun" is British gutter press (Score:5, Insightful)
That newspaper is the lowest of the low, the gutter press. Their normal faire consists of entirely fabricated stories and their conduct is entirely unethical. Do not place ANY credence to stories printed in this paper.
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Much more dependable papers, but commonly read by pretenious middle class left wing wannabes who love the smell of their own farts.
Re:"The Sun" is British gutter press (Score:4, Funny)
Jim Hacker: The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country. The Times is read by people who actually do run the country. The Daily Mirror is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who own the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country. The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about people who read the Sun.
Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country as long as she's got big tits.
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To put it into context, its owned by Murdoch (like the Times), so think of the Sun as a slightly more intellectual version of Fox News.
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They're both Rupert Murdoch. Just because the Sun has a British accent doesn't mean that they're more intellectual. Do you fall for this one at parties, too?
- RG>
Re:"The Sun" is British gutter press (Score:4, Informative)
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1. It got Tony Blair elected. 3 times. Why do you think Tony addresses the NewsCorp annual dinner?
2. The markets move to what is mentioned on The Sun's city news page. Why? Because the barrow-boy traders who shift billions around the economy each day read it on the can before the day's trading starts.
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Yes, it's gutter press (tabloid), yes (even worse) it's Murdoch, but "entirely fabricated"? "Do not place ANY credence"? I think you're confusing it with the Sport...
The Sun may spin the news to a pro-Murdoch agenda, they may pander to the more distasteful aspects of its readership (xenophobia etc), they may deliver their news in little words of one syllable for the not-very-bright, and they may intersperse their news with boobies and tiresome "celebrity" friffery. But they don't "normal
In 21st Century (Score:1)
In 21st century, one would accumulate frequent flier miles from 40 trips to space to earn a single trip from US to UK.
At last! (Score:1)
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Someone else's bag, naturally.
Near Earth Orbit? (Score:1)
Why is this a big deal? (Score:2, Interesting)
The final frontier ... (Score:1)
Perhaps not, but what he had in mind when he came up with Enterprise was space travel at speeds that take you to the stratosphere of a planet
in a another quadrant of our galaxy within a few years, not flights to earth's stratosphere.
I think your statement may be more suitable 30
Frequent flier miles and the "warp one club" .. (Score:2)
No, but Kirk had plenty of "frequent flier miles" with every alien female he could get his hands on, if you know what I mean
40 times in 6 years is not that much. (Score:1)
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Do the numbers add up? (Score:2)
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Is space is no longer the final frontier? (Score:2)
Well, unless you found another frontier beyond space, I'm gonna say no.
More importantly... (Score:1, Funny)
keptin! (Score:2)
Scotty! I ... want you ... to ... prepare to beam up our ... 20th century ... comedy ... collection!
Captain! I kinnae give 'em "The Waterboy"! She'll blow!
Fascinating! Captain, I believe they are flying the new ultra high seat density birds of prey with 15% less legspace. I thought only Cherry Galactic had them!
Dammit, don't do it, Jim! At least ask them for their sealed peanut bags. I'm run
Wrong (Score:1)
That is 100% wrong. This is exactly what Gene Roddenberry had in mind. For a common person to be able to expiernce the wonders of space. Give props to him, we wouldn't be here without his vision.
Also... really slashdot...that comment is pure flamebait for this site.
What a Long Strange Trip It Willam Haven Been (Score:2)
I can show you pix of the trips now if you're improbable enough to stand it.
British Man Trades Frequent Flyer Miles for Space (Score:1)
When they say upgrade... (Score:2)
rj
Space: The final frontier (Score:2)
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way up to suborbital flight, but that's just peanuts to space.
-- with apologies to Douglas Adams
Don't be so pessimistic (Score:5, Insightful)
Using miles is a wise choice (Score:2)
Now if you were going into orbit, it would be worth paying for because you would earn enough miles for another trip right there. You go a lot of miles on any orbital flight.
(In fact, it is amusing to point out that while the airline industry likes to point out that air travel is far safer than car travel in terms of deaths per passenger mile, th
Beware of complimentary clothing (Score:2)
Moo (Score:2, Funny)
The fine print: (Score:2)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil [wikipedia.org]
There will have to be something very valuable in space to justify the energy required to get there. Probably the military domination required to ensure access to the remaining oil supplies. The Outer Space Treaty? Not worth the paper it's written on.
Off the top of my head... (Score:2, Insightful)
Minerals? -- space has more than one can imagine
Space.... has SPACE -- using automated robots and orbiting factories to process raw minerals we will construct floating cities that will rival the best on earth
Why did Europeans colonise the Americas? I mean, look at the expense! :rolls eyes:
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Sure, of course it has. The question though is would it be cheaper to kill a few million people in a neighbouring country or to go searching through space for water and minerals.
step 3: profit twice (Score:2)
Find a big chunk of minerals and drop it on your neighbours.
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Earth is increasingly short of fresh water....
Eh? The Earth has the same amount of fresh water it's always had and always will. It's a ">closed system [slashdot.org] and any water you see/drink/urinate now has been around pretty much doing it's thing since forever.
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Grrr.. broke my Link [wikipedia.org]. That'll teach me to preview.
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Not exactly. More preciselly "The Earth has the same amount of [word removed] water it's always had and always will".
The water cycle is indeed a closed cycle, so no water is gained and no water is lost.
However the closed water cycle does not in any way guarantee the availability of non-poluted, low salt-
Re:Off the top of my head... (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh? Short of fresh water? There's a whole ocean of it, and it covers 71% of the planet! Oh, you mean it's salty? So what, do you think we can just drink whatever we find in space, without cleaning it up first?
Regarding minerals. Yes they are out there. But we are living on a pretty big rock ourselves. The minerals in space, are probably going to be most important for projects in space (if we ever get to that level of sophistication). Bringing them down to earth probably isn't worth the expense.
Unfortunately, at this time, automated robots are only useful for a very small minority of manufacturing tasks. And while orbiting factories sound like a neat idea, remember how much infrastructure is needed to keep just one factory running on earth. Given todays technology, we can't just build a factory in space. We would have to build thousands of factories, in order to make them support each other. Among the things that need to be produced, are: air, water, food, energy, fuel, space rockets, human habitats and clothing, as well as replacement parts for everything that's in orbit (which includes screws, plastic bags, pencils, ball bearings, microprocessors, aspirin, etc...)!
Sorry, that's just not compareable. America was fertile farm-land, just waiting to be colonized. Once you had paid your ticket for transportation, and brought enough money and supplies for surviving a year (worst estimate, many did well with less), you would be able to survive by farming your own land. People fled to America, just to get an opportunity to live there.
In contrast; You can't just fly off to space and live off the land. In order to survive in space, you need a huge expensive infrastructure, and a constant reshipment of supplies, where supplies even consists of such elementary stuff as air, water, and food. It is possible to imagine that future technologies will make this easier, but as of now, we don't have such future technologies. People fled to America, but if someone started a colony in space, asked colonists to pay their own ticket, and to pay for all supplies that will be shipped in later, no sane people would move there.
In any foreseeable future, space can only get colonized through massive government subsidies, and there's no payoff in sight. Which is probably the reason why we haven't colonized it yet.
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The Americas had gravity, water, oxygen and food. Space has none of that.
It was also relatively cheap to set up in America, just build a hut and live off the local plants and animals. Even one person living in space requires a massive, expensive operation involving hundreds of people working constantly, and billions of dollars worth of technology.
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Switch to nuclear and run vechiles with hydrogen, batteries or vegetable oil. The anti-nuclear morons will complain, but they will anyway no matter what you do. Or drill a deep hole in the ground, drop some water there and watch geothermal heat turn it to steam. Or build tidal or wave harnesses in coastal regions to harness sa
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Um, it's because oil is much much cheaper than the alternatives. Said alternatives will come online as oil gets more expensive. However, they will still take up a significantly larger proportion of the economy than oil has over the last century.
Btw, money making, is the rational choice.
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To put it another way:
You don't have any proof that peak oil is going to happen. It's just the standard catastrophist call of "you better do what I say or something very bad will happen."
For all you know, we'll get fusion worked out in five years and we'll have tons of cheap, clean energy causing a massive DRO
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Exact opposite is true: a great future in space (Score:5, Insightful)
You have that back to front. The current difficulty of doing space travel is temporary, because it is the result of poor strength of materials and poor energy usage.
Materials technology is improving at an extraordinary pace, and there is now a whole industry dedicated to manufacturing nanotubes of one form or another, despite this being only the beginning of work on nanoscale materials. Much greater things are on the way. And with stronger, lighter materials you can build much better space-worthy craft, not only hugely safer in the hostile medium but also able to withstand greater dynamic forces more safely. And more cheaply!
Then we come to energy. Contrary to the daily propaganda of environmentalists, there is no shortage of energy on the planet --- the surface of the Earth receives about 150 thousand times more energy from the sun than mankind is forecast to need by the year 2020. Our "energy problems" simply reflect our poor ability to harness that near-zero-cost energy, currently.
But that can change, especially in the context of space flight.
For a start, we can rise up through the bulk of the atmosphere almost without any energy cost at all, and many outfits are already experimenting with that [jpaerospace.com], to the very edge of space.
And secondly, once up there, solar energy is freely available, and as long as there is still residual atmosphere around you, this gives you matter which you can use for propulsion, slowly building up speed as you skip through the upper layers. A relatively small amount of extra reaction mass is needed to boost the orbit out the final few dozen miles once you have close to orbital speed.
In due course then, on materials and energy grounds there is every reason to forecast a very bright and buoyant future for space travel. NASA-type costs are not required, as long as you're not in a hurry.
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My god, you're right! Energy is practically free!
Harnessing free energy must be easy!
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Really, what happens when the sun dies out? Or the earth's core cools off resulting in no magnetic field which will lead to the atmosphere evaporating into space?
Won't be anyone around if we haven't traveled into space...
But I suppose it would be a moot point if no one was around to care that all the humans died off.
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Not sure about the accuracy of the second part of your statement. However, it is not going to happen for hundreds of millions or even billions of years. We can't even make policy based on things we know will help us in twenty years, much less worry about millions of years.
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"SPOILSPORT!" I think that explains much.
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Gee, you're right. Humans aren't curious, or adventurous. They have no sense of wonder, no desire for experience, no appreciation of the sublime, no desire to go anywhere just because it's there, no ability to achieve greatness just to express their appreciation of the divine. And to whatever extent they do have those things, they're just children's dreams, and everyone knows how worthless *those* are.
You wouldn't be worth a sneer if children weren't reading.
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Re:Well (Score:5, Informative)
A) They won't be going to space in the sense that astronauts (and especially some cosmonauts) have been. It's just a few minutes of staying at a considerable height...
B) The virgin spaceship is not a rocket. Takeoff should not be a bad experience.
well well (Score:2)
A) At the considerable height they will be at, they're in space. No, they will not be there long and they will not orbit.
B) The Virgin spaceship is a rocket. It is rocket-powered. It has significant thrust on takeoff, and the thrust is unmodulated, so it will be ma
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Its hard to get professionals to do that if they're all stuck doing things at governmental levels.
Besides, the comparison to Columbia is completely inapt. The shuttles' method of delivery has been compared to stacking TNT to the height of a street lamp pole just to launch a nut into space.
The Virgin method is much closer to traditional aviation
Re:Well (Score:5, Informative)
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1 The experience is worth the risk
2 They can brag about having gone to space
3 Their lives are not worth living anymore and
Re:Well (Score:5, Funny)
Dude. If you think this is any less reason to go to space than the other three, you are nuts!
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I believe you can get a number of equally rewarding experiences in life without such risk.
You are entitled to your opinion. But clearly a lot of people disagree with you on this. And that's really all there is to say.Re: (Score:2)
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Perhaps instead of voicing your ill-informed opinion you should leave it to the professionals to comment on it. Which they have, in spades, supporting the efforts of the commercial space tourism industry. Most of these outfits have ex-astronauts working for them.
Finding out what can and can't be done on commercial levels requires doing it on commercial level
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What worries me more is about their preparations for the journey, astronauts spend years preparing to go into space and now it is being treated like a long-haul flight for some, I'm sure they will have some training but are they sure it is enough for the kind of forces that their body is going to experience while taking off?
I'm puzzled by what you think happens when someone is launched into space. They just experience more acceleration than normal. There are various ways to experience this on Earth. Fo
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And I'm off topic?
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For one, hopefully this: http://www.darkhorizons.com/news06/060921b.php [darkhorizons.com] will not come to pass.
Spicoli as Einstein? The HORROR!