science

RocketShip Tours

RocketShip Tours is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand RocketShip Tours rather than just read about it. In short: RocketShip Tours is an American space tourism company founded in 2008 by travel industry entrepreneur Jules Klar and which planned to provide sub-orbital human spaceflights to the paying public, in partnership with rocketplane developer XCOR Aerospace. Klar created RocketShip Tours to act as General Sales Agent for XCOR Aerospace.

Key takeaways

RocketShip Tours belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect RocketShip Tours to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of RocketShip Tours from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

RocketShip Tours is an American space tourism company founded in 2008 by travel industry entrepreneur Jules Klar and which planned to provide sub-orbital human spaceflights to the paying public, in partnership with rocketplane developer XCOR Aerospace. Klar created RocketShip Tours to act as General Sales Agent for XCOR Aerospace. Jules Klar got his start in the travel business in New York City in 1961. He founded $5-A-Day Tours in partnership with Arthur Frommer of Frommer's fame. Klar's company, Great American Travel became one of the most successful wholesale travel organizations in America through the succeeding years. The company's space tourism package included screening, training and a trip into suborbital space. Jules selected XCOR Aerospace to partner with, due to its record of reliable rocket engine development and technological approach towards suborbital space travel. In 2012 XCOR signed Space Expedition Corporation (SXC) as their new General Sales Agent For Space Tourism Flights.

Spacecraft Designed and built by XCOR Aerospace, the Lynx rocketplane will have four liquid rocket engines at the rear of the fuselage burning a mixture of LOX-Kerosene and each of them will give between 2500-2900 lbf (11 120-12 900 N) of thrust. The Lynx is projected to carry one pilot, a ticketed passenger, and/or a payload or small satellites above 100 km altitude. The occupants would wear pressure suits made by Orbital Outfitters Archived 2011-02-02 at the Wayback Machine. The Lynx was initially announced on March 26, 2008, with plans for an operational vehicle within two years. That date has since fallen to late 2011. Mark I Prototype Maximum Altitude: 61 km (200,000 ft) Primary Internal Payload: 120 kg (265 lbs) External Dorsal Mounted Pod: 280 kg (617 lbs) Secondary payload spaces include a small area inside the cockpit behind the pilot or outside the vehicle in two areas in the aft fuselage fairing. Mark II Production Model Maximum Altitude: +100 km (+330,000 ft) Primary Internal Payload: 120 kg (265 lbs) External Dorsal Mounted Pod: 650 kg (1433 lbs) and is large enough to hold a two-stage carrier to launch a microsatellite or multiple nanosatellites into low Earth orbit. Secondary payload spaces include the same as the Mark I.

Overview Suborbital flight tickets are now available ($95,000 per person with a $20,000 deposit). The initial deposit qualifies the passenger for a four-day orientation, medical screening and G-Force training at an Arizona resort. A final payment is required to take the flight aboard the Lynx rocketplane. It is expected that the spacecraft will be piloted by Richard A. Searfoss, a retired United States Air Force colonel, NASA Astronaut and current XCOR test pilot. The craft is projected to be a one-passenger, one pilot rocketplane. Its planned trajectory will overlap the Earth's atmosphere at 70,000 feet (21,000 m), which will make it a sub-orbital journey with a short period of weightlessness. The spacecraft, the Lynx rocketplane, is a Suborbital rocket-powered aircraft being developed by the California-based company XCOR Aeorospace. When operational, the vehicle will fly over 100 km (the Kármán line, a common definition of where "space" begins). The time from liftoff of the Lynx until the touchdown of the vehicle after the sub-orbital flight will be about 1.0 hour. The sub-orbital flight itself will only be a small fraction of that time. The weightlessness will last approximately 5 minutes.

Competition

Besides RocketShip Tours, there are numerous other companies actively working on commercial passenger suborbital spaceflight. Additionally, there are several others developing commercial crewed orbital spaceflight capability (including some which are initially designed for, or may eventually be used for, commercial passenger spaceflight), which is a significantly more difficult problem than suborbital spaceflight. In 2013, tickets were available through the XCOR partnership with Space Expedition Corporation (SXC). Priced at $95,000, they were around half the $200,000 cost quoted by Virgin Galactic, the main competitor in the commercial sub-orbital spaceflight market.

Base Test launches are planned to take place from the Mojave Spaceport, where XCOR Aerospace is constructing the spacecraft. RocketShip Tours expects that initial passenger flights will take place there, as well.

See also Commercial astronaut List of private spaceflight companies Space Adventures Space colonization Space tourism Space Tourism Society

References

External links XCOR Aerospace - Official Website

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with RocketShip Tours

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what RocketShip Tours claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to RocketShip Tours before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about RocketShip Tours ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of RocketShip Tours

In research: RocketShip Tours appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses RocketShip Tours in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: RocketShip Tours is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Aerospace companies of the United States, Commercial spaceflight, Defunct spaceflight companies, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for RocketShip Tours outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study RocketShip Tours in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what RocketShip Tours means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain RocketShip Tours out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is RocketShip Tours in simple terms?

Why does RocketShip Tours matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study RocketShip Tours?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on RocketShip Tours.