PASSING through the Mojave Desert, one would not intuit a population of space travelers. "I thought we left the space cases back in LA...", one wonders as the hour and some drive from home base quickly closes. The barren landscape is fitting, evoking a Martian colony, complete with the surreal, stunted Joshua Trees that could’ve been an attempt at organic toilet scrubbers. This ground has become a playground for those massive companies in the city who need a bit of space to stretch their wings, as well as a refuge for the engineers more intent on rocket building then beach days and club nights.
Amidst the expansive desert is a group of engineers attempting to conquer the ultimate desert, the entity we call Space. Xcor Aerospace is a company determined on sharing the space experience with non-astronautic civilians, for the bargain of $95,000 (Virgin Galactic, the only competitor, charges double that). The project has been labeled Lynx, a reusable launch vehicle (RLV) powered by rocket engines that will enable suborbital flight (flying roughly 60 km above sea-level, still within the Earth’s gravitational pull). Besides having the vantage of seeing the Earth’s curvature and an unfiltered lens into space, suborbital flights hold the possibility of rapid transportation across our world using the Earth’s natural spin as a speed boost; as in, breakfast in Los Angeles, lunch in Paris, dinner in Tokyo. Superman style.
--Weston Finfer
No comments:
Post a Comment