hawkinator

banned because I was born in Ohio and I have a mostly Yankee accent.

As for the orbit, I was planning for LEO. The Falcon 9 is rated for 13,150kg or 28,991 lb to LEO, but only 4,850kg or 10,692 lb to GTO. We might be able to fit for GTO, but ideally it would be nice to fit alongside someone else who was going to space, which would require shrinking it quite a bit, but would lower the cost of getting to space (this is the reason for using a short bus).

I searched trampoline with holes. What I found was much more awesome than what I was looking for: This looks like an absolute blast.

banned for making fun of The Natural State.

I would agree that a decomissioned battleship would be awesome, but not feasible with current technology.

Thanks for all the great feedback, guys. I am working on creating a Kickstarter project for this, possibly under the category of technology. You've given me a lot of really great ideas, many of which will become part of the project. On a related note, is anyone willing to make an image (one which will make people want to spend money on this)/ video for the project? These are very important things if it is to succeed, and unfortunately, I have very little talent in this area. Also, I have not heard anything back from SpaceX yet. In the bus acquiring area, I actually have some personal connections from my church in that department. They have a ministry where they bring people to church in buses (old school buses, with the "school bus" replaced with "church bus" and the name of the church down the side of it.) They actually maintain a relatively large fleet of buses, and I happen to know some of the folks in charge of the bus ministry, so I would simply ask them about it.

agreed, metalmouth. Also, I find it interesting that of the people who have voted, the only moderators who have voted are split fifty-fifty.

banned for not having one of my favorite colors in your avatar

My long history of schooling: (note that the following is my history. I'm not necessarily proud or ashamed of it, but it's what happened [or as best as I can remember]) I started out (as far as I can remember, it's hard to be sure when your best source is your six year old self) going to a private school that used a weird system called the Montessori method. Essentially, kids were allowed to sort of pick learning activities and learn at their own pace. It was structured completely differently than any sort of school I've ever seen before or since. (this was approximately kindergarten thru first grade, although it's a bit fuzzy, both because of my lack of memory of it and because of the weirdness of the system) Next up, I started going to good 'ole fashioned American public school (in second grade, I think). I remember being light-years ahead of most of my classmates in a lot of subjects, and slightly behind in others. I also remember this being the most miserable time for me emotionally (largely due to a lot of other factors in my life at the time.) After that I went to a Christian private school. Naturally, we were all taught the Bible and that evolution was a big fat lie, but mostly we learned about how to do math, write proper sentences, histories of people in far away places (which bored us), the history of how our nation became [sarcasm] the greatest in the WORLD!! [/sarcasm] (which we enjoyed), and how cells work and plant reproduce and the like. In other words, we learned what other kids were learning, plus the Bible, minus evolution (well, we were taught about evolution, mostly how big of a lie it was). Of note here is that while we always heard about how "schools around the county had such terrible bullying problems", we didn't have any. Like, none. Pretty much all the time, we just got along. There were, I think, two reasons for this, one being that there were so very few of us to begin with (I think there were about five people in my grade, although we shared a classroom with two other grades), and the other was that that meant that the staff were able to much more effectively deal with problems that arose. Oh, and we got spankings, I mean actual physical spankings that hurt, when we did something bad enough (they had to have forms signed by the parents to do this. In my family, the rule was that if you got one at school, you were going to get another one at home. So, yeah...) I went here from about the second half of second grade thru fourth grade. Then, I was home-schooled for fifth and sixth grade. Not much to report here, except that I was really lonely. Also, I did a lot of goofing off and got all those weird looks at the supermarket that everybody talks about. After that I went to a different Christian school. This one was a lot like the other one except for a few differences. It was slightly bigger. It had closer ties to it's associated church, but wasn't any more or less religiously focused. It was structured more like a traditional school, whereas the other one had a "learning center" structure. I attended seventh thru twelfth grade here and learned [opinion]that you don't have to completely give up on religion to be a scientist[/opinion] This is my true story. My personal opinions are labeled as such, the opinions of those who have taught me are labeled as such, and I hope you have found it informative and interesting, and most of all, I dare you to find someone with a more complicated educational background than me. (most people I talk to have done one or two of the schooling types I mention here, but not all of them) Have a nice day/night! [p.s. This is kind of something that I have been wanting to get off my chest for a while, so... yeah.]

banned for joining two years ago.

Definitely KSP.

according to their twitter, the launch window opens at 5:38 EST. They have a live webcast scheduled for approximately that time. Probably.

banned for large avatar

Kickstarter rewards [WIP]: $10 - You get your name recorded in a hard drive on board the bus $50 - You get your name printed in a book on the bus $100 - Your 2 x 2 in. logo printed on the outside of the bus $500 - Your 4 x 4 in. logo printed on the outside of the bus $1000 - Your 1 foot square logo printed on the outside of the bus $5000 - Your trinket size less than one cubic foot and weighing less than half a pound inside the bus. Cameras will allow remote observation of all trinkets floating inside the bus.

nope, I got nothing

banned for having an avatar whose background is also blue. (and because it's Thanksgiving)

banned for lack of avatar and sig

There is a possibility that if we used a half bus, then we would be able to share a launch with someone else who is also launching something into space. This would dramatically lower the cost...

exactly. If the ball gets rolling, it could get rolling really big, and we will never know unless we try. Also, preliminary research suggests that Kickstarter may not be the best place, on there we would need to fit it into one of these categories: Art Comics, Dance, Design, Fashion, Film & Video, Food, Games, Music, Photography, Publishing, Technology, or Theater, otherwise it never even exists. Indiegogo, however, allows just about any cause, or so it would seem.

Banned for questioning the work of Odin, Norse lightning mod of the Forums.

You posted the only thing I might have to add to the title. Also, how do you like the choices?

Hmm, I hadn't thought of that. Well at any rate, I would say that it's entirely possible that we might not get a response until tomorrow or maybe even Friday. Patience may be required.

Well... They haven't responded to the E-mail, but then again there is a high likelihood that the person/people whose job it is to answer questions on that e-mail address have gone home for the day (we're going to presume that this is there job and they work like normal office people who pretend to have lives). Unfortunately (for us) SpaceX is an American company, so their people probably get Thanksgiving day off, which is tomorrow. So it is quite probable that no one will even see the email till Friday Oh well, tell me what you think... http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/59865-Should-we-start-a-Kickstarter-to-launch-a-bus-into-space And Maybe, just Maybe...

Well, exactly what the title says... I don't have much to add to that.

banned for being ninja'd