Domain Name and Stupid Votes

A couple of pieces of website news today:

The first bit of news is I finally forked over the $10 to buy http://www.joespacetourist.com/! joespacetourist.blogspot.com will remain valid, but joespacetourist.com will be the primary website from here on out.

The second is that I've started up a whole new website to rant about politics! Remember my list of things I would do if I were president? Item number 4 on that list went sometiung like this:

4. I would urge congresspeople to abstain on ridiculous frivolous votes like what to rename this federal building and should we have a National Orphaned Amputee Leper Day. Do you realize that this kind of crap makes up 3/4 of what congress does these days? Those who do abstain will get to have lunch with me frequently, because they're my kind of people.

Well, I've been following the issue of frivolous votes more and more since I wrote that, and it's horrendous how much nothing these people do! So I'm starting a website about it. http://www.stupidvotes.com/ will document as many of these stupid resolutions and hearings that I can find, and I'll be encouraging members of our government to abstain from such things. The website isn't quite up yet, but it will show itself any time now. I'm 80% sure that all I'll accomplish with the site is getting all this off my chest, but that's good enough for me. And who knows? Maybe someone will take notice.

That's it for now!

Progress: 4.03%  Flight Time: 0:06:05

Why NBC Can Go Suck A Rotted Porcupine

Okay, remember early this month when I complained that there hadn't been much space tourism news? Yeah, I was kind of wrong about that. But it wasn't my fault.

I blame NBC.

And why would I point my finger so emphatically at them? Well, to explain that, I'll need to get into a bit of history about this website.

When I was starting this website almost a year ago, I was simply relaying information I had seen on TV, or more often by clicking around the internet. However, early on, I decided that if I was going to make this website an awesome place to follow space tourism news, I was going to need to find a way to get regular updates myself. So I started clicking around at the websites for individual companies to see if there was a way to get updates, which in turn prompted me to start writing up company profiles here.

A few of the companies, such as SpaceX, had e-mail newsletter services that I could sign up for, but most of the companies that provide regular updates simply have RSS feeds, which is an easy way to get updates if you want to visit their websites constantly to check them.

Well, I'm way too lazy for that.

So after clicking around the internet a little bit longer, I discovered a website with a service called SendMeRSS. This service watched specified websites for RSS updates and sent them to people through e-mail. So every few days, I would get an e-mail with an update about one of these companies. I even signed up for the New Voyage News and Personal Spaceflight feeds to catch whatever fell through the cracks; they have some great space tourism information too.

Well, little did I know that NBC Universal bought out SendMeRSS about a year ago, and in October, they shut it down. This alone wouldn't have been a problem, except for one big screw you to their customers:

They did it without telling anyone.

Yeah. Awesome, guys. So in early October, I quietly stopped getting updates without any notification that the service was gone. I was still getting updates directly from companies like SpaceX that have their own e-mail newsletter services, so I didn't really notice that there was certain information I wasn't getting anymore, and I assumed the drop in volume was due to a lack of space tourism news. This had two consequences:

1. This website has been heavy on SpaceX news and light on everything else for the past couple of months.
2. I've missed out on some really great stuff.

On the upside, for the next week or two, I'll try to update at least daily to play catch-up, and maybe more. I'll start this afternoon with an awesome piece of news that clued me in to the fact that I wasn't getting the feeds anymore, and after that, I'll go chronologically starting in mid-October when I stopped getting updates. It will take some time to choose a new RSS/e-mail service (preferably one not tied to a corporate overlord) and rebuild the list of feeds I was watching, but it will get done eventually.

And that's why NBC can go suck a rotted porcupine.

Yeah, that's right, NBC. I know this won't even reach the level of a mosquito bite on your massively oversized ass, but I'm taking Heroes off my DVR. I wasn't watching it anymore anyway.

Progress: 4.03%  Flight Time: 0:06:05

Progress Bar!

Well, I've been meaning to do this, and now I've found the time. That progress bar down there represents the progress I've made in saving toward my trip to space! This is, of course, more to motivate me than for your information. I'm basing the progress bar on the cost of a flight on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo (though I reserve the right to change that in the future). So far, I've managed to save 3.24%, and I'm putting a little more away every month. If I've done the math right, I have enough for four minutes, fifty-one seconds of SpaceShipTwo's expected two hour, thirty minute flight time! Wooo!

Anyway, I'll be updating this bar continually throughout my journey.

Progress: 3.24%  Flight Time: 0:04:51

I'm going to space!

Welcome one and all!

My name (well, my name here) is Joe Space Tourist. And let me tell you why:

When I was in high school (about ten years or so ago; I'm 26), I decided that someday, I would go to space. I was just a regular kid in a regular school among the regular masses, silent and vocal, repressed and excited, optimistic and beaten-down. But I had watched the shuttle launches. I had watched the old Mercury and Apollo, and Soyuz capsules fly into space, circle the Earth, bring people from this planet safely to the Moon and back again, and Touch The Sky. I knew; I knew that I had to be part of this. That I had to, somehow, in some way, bring myself to the edge of human exploration, of human thought and dreams and imagination. I wanted to do something fantastic, and I still do.

In short, I fully intend to light a rocket under my butt and shoot myself out of the atmosphere.

I had a problem though; I simply was not cut out for the astronaut corps. I (frankly) sucked at school, I have bad eyesight in one eye, and I wasn't willing to join the military, for reasons that I may or may not get into later. I knew back then, and I fully admitted to myself, that I would never be an astronaut in the traditional sense. So even back in high school, I put my hopes on private companies to eventually help me find a way to fulfill my dream.

Then came the Ansari X-Prize. What a great idea! To promise $20 million dollars to the first private company that could launch three people into space twice within a week. Practically the definition of space tourism! And the results were spectacular. In the year 2004, there were exactly four manned launches into space. One was a Russian Soyuz capsule sending new personnel and supplies to the International Space Station. The other three were SpaceShipOne.

SpaceShipOne and the whole team at Scaled Composites are amazing. A hundred and twenty people created a successful space program with only $10 million in funds. How incredible is that? Not only that, but the ship they designed only had a few moving parts, was mechanically controlled, was capable of re-entering the atmosphere without a heat shield and was first piloted by a 60 year old high school dropout! There is nothing about SpaceShipOne's story that isn't incredible! If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend the Discovery Channel documentary on the design, construction, and testing of SpaceShipOne (on the right). It's very entertaining and thought-provoking, and they come very close to complete disaster no less than three times!

After SpaceShipOne's three successful flights, it was retired (it now hangs from the ceiling at the Smithsonian), and Scaled Composites partnered with the newly-founded Virgin Galactic to create SpaceShipTwo and sell flights to the general public. They're not the only ones; today, there are no fewer than five companies around the world with serious plans to provide similar flights. Virgin Galactic even set a price: $200,000 per flight.

$200,000? That's a bit of a stickler. Most people assume that this prohibitive price sets space tourism firmly in the realm of the obscenely wealthy.

Well, that is why I'm writing this blog. I'm going to prove them wrong, and I'm going to share my journey with you.

The $200,000 price tag gave me three choices. I could give up on my dream, but for me, that's not an option. I could wait for more companies to enter the arena and prices to drop; this could very well happen, but I don't want to rely on it. So my third option is to spend my life working toward this. That is what I have decided to do.

In other words, I'm not here to say that anyone can do this. Not everyone can. It's going to take a hell of a lot of drive, determination, careful planning, and above all, the ability to turn nay-sayers into fuel for the fire. Anyone who tells me I can't do this only makes me more determined to prove them wrong. In other words, what I am saying is that anyone with these qualities can do this. You, too, can go to space.

And I'm going to prove it.