Hey, in a couple of years you may be able to send an object up into space and get it back for as little as $99! A private company in California (as it is so often) is aiming to make this happen by 2008. The payload will need to fit inside a space the size of a standard soda can, and weigh no more than 350 grams, but that’s probably room to be pretty useful actually. To the right is an artist’s impression of the spacecraft they are expecting to build to accomplish this.
I learned about this from a New Scientist article by Kelly Young. You can read the whole thing here.
Now some of you are thinking about the fun things you’d want to send up there for a short trip, ranging from personal objects to scientific experiments you might design.
Care to share?
-cvj
April 20th, 2006 at 8:17 pm
The idea strikes me as very similar, for unclear reasons, to the cans of “holyland air” (aka empty cans) that are on sale throughout Israel, maybe one of those could be sent to space as well. This will serve more or less the same purpose it serves normally.
April 20th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
I guess if you want you chocolate milk to be thoroughly mixed…
April 20th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
Is there a half price option available for bake-sale customers who only want to purchase one-way tickets for their precious baked-goods? I can think of more goods that I would rather keep in space than return to earth. Regardless of available package options for the space-bake customer, it sounds like – without a doubt – that I need to jump on these discount prices before Masten Space Systems impose a substantial price hike on the up-and-coming/space-savvy consumer!
April 20th, 2006 at 10:16 pm
Breast implants to dispell the myth or create one of the more interesting of explosions in human history. Is foam insulation or breat implants more interesting? You decide.
April 21st, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Boosting mass in the lamentable Space Scuttle costs $(US)30/gram. If NASA modularized that white elephant… it could outsource!
April 21st, 2006 at 8:31 pm
In order to try and improve its keeping I would like to send a…Casio Watch!
April 22nd, 2006 at 9:17 am
Cynthia,
I hear you. There are a few meals my mother experimented with years ago that I wish would have been given a one-way trip off the planet and away from my gut.
April 24th, 2006 at 7:22 am
Chris Tunnell- Why don’t you just get a bell jar and a rotary vane pump?