What are the challenges of doing suborbital science?
There are a lot of unknowns as well as opportunities with crewed suborbital science. We should remember that suborbital science is not new … there has been considerable and consistent demand for it for several decades, for which sounding rockets (which are bigger than you might imagine) are currently used to access near-space at about 60 miles. Also, believe it or not, high altitude (in excess of 100,000 feet) and long duration (as long as 40 days) balloons are flown multiple times from various locations around the globe to accomplish similar science. But each of these platforms has a single problem: all are operated remotely and there is no direct interface with the operator. So, crewed suborbital science has the potential to enable more complex, but more importantly, less expensive experimental packages. (Less expensive because there’s neither need for automation nor multiple redundancies.) The challenges appear few, but there are likely several more lurking in the shadows, waiting t
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