Doing The Inspiration4 Media Rounds
Keith’s note: Yesterday I was on Bloomberg Radio live – twice – doing launch commentary for their morning show in Asia and was on Deutsche Welle at 9:00 pm EDT. I was CNN New Day this morning morning to talk about the mission. I cut an interview on CGTN tomorrow afternoon about China’s space station crew’s return to Earth and … no doubt … talking to someone else about space in the next few days. Update: I just did an Al Jazeera Arabic interview.
A Space World Record has been broken today: for the first time there are Fourteen human beings in Space (orbit) – 7x on ISS, 3x on the Chinese Space Station and 4x on Inspiration 4. Outstanding!!
Clarification, that’s in sustained orbital motion, not popping above the Karmen line for a few minutes!
Yes, I know – I did not imply otherwise!? This is no place to try start a ‘Sheldon Cooper’ like semantic, er, discussion. And anyone who tries to imply that somehow, sub-orbital flights above the Karman Line are not spaceflights; and that the flights of Shepard, Grissom and the X-15 flights of Joseph Walker retroactively don’t matter… Heh; good luck with that…
I believe he is referring to the fact that there were fourteen people in space for a few minutes during the Jeff Bezos flight, so technically this is the second time that fourteen people have been in space if using the Karman line as the basis. And using the U.S. boundary there were sixteen people in space during the Richard Branson flight.
I agree though that “outstanding” applies more to the orbital flights.
Second time? Good point!! Here I am defending the validity of sub-orbital flights, and I didn’t even notice that.
Honestly? No, I, at least, didn’t find it clear and enough smart-asses elsewhere were talking about the number in space during the NS and VG flights that I felt it worth mentioning.
I think the VG flights are and will be excellent – I wish I could afford one – but as you will probably agree; they are definitely below the Karman Line and no one should seriously count them as spaceflights. Heck, unless I’m mistaken; only 2x X-15 flights made it above 100 kms altitude and hardly anyone ever mentions them. I apologize for any offense I may have caused. I was just sticking up for those X-15 flights. The Mercury-Redstone missions were never in question.
Yes only the two Joseph Walker flights went above the Karman line. As for sticking up for the X-15 flights, it can be pointed out that very few people have made solo spaceflights. That would be the Vostok and Mercury flights, the X-15 flights, the early Soyuz flights, and the SpaceShipOne flights. I am not counting instances where someone flew solo in a spacecraft that was already in space.