Rutan describing how long he want’s his circa 1972 “mutton chops” to grow
Branson And Rutan Launch New Spaceship Manufacturing Company — These guys have lost it. The real reason for travel is to go from here to there, not as a cheap thrill. In this case not so cheap. This is what happens when you get too much money. What they are creating is a very expesnive bungee jump ride with no cords. After one person is killed this will end overnight.
Richard Branson (Founder, Virgin Group of Companies) and Burt Rutan (President, Scaled Composites) have signed a deal to form a new aerospace production company to build a fleet of commercial sub-orbital spaceships and launch aircraft. The new company will own the designs of the new SpaceShipTwo (SS2) and White Knight Two (WK2) launch systems that are now in development at Scaled Composites.
The SS2/WK2 system will use the ‘Care-free reentry’ and the ‘cantilevered-hybrid’ rocket motor technology developed for the Ansari X prize-winning SpaceShipOne (SS1), and will license that technology from Paul Allen’s Mojave Aerospace company. The Spaceship Company will manufacture the new launch aircraft, spaceships and support equipment and market them to spaceline operators, including the launch customer, Virgin Galactic.
The Spaceship Company will be jointly owned by Virgin and Scaled, and will contract Scaled for the research, development, testing and certification of SS2/WK2. Burt Rutan will head up the technical development team.
Then there are these boneheads
Well, yeah, you’re right. But they ARE travelling from here to there, HERE being the ground and THERE being the edge of space. I’ve never been there, have you? Would love to see it! If loonies such as Burt and Dick don’t start doing it, we won’t ever get THERE… or beyond…
“These guys have lost it.” … “After one person is killed this will end overnight.” I suppose the same was said of the Wright Brothers.
We can see that NASA is struggling, what with the bureaucracy, budgets, politics and all. These guys can just “go for it” without being handcuffed by that stuff. This will be fun to watch.
Alan
Well, if you’ve ever looked at the endless badlands of Mars from orbiter pics, you would wonder why anyone would want to Boldly Go Places That Only Robots Need To Bother With (aside from very brave geologists, maybe, or people who study Antarctica and are looking for ever more lonely inhospitable places to test themselves). All these man-in-space advocates are starting to look more and more like folks who’ve simply been reading too many Larry Niven stories.
But then again, it was a hands-on effort that fixed the Hubble ST, so the argument isn’t entirely over yet. Perhaps George could send someone to fetch the Beagle lander back for Tony. .. put suicide bombers to work going after dangerous asteroids, etc.
psst No country other then Russia can reach space with out the help of the US (once again I could be wrong, but all non Russian launch pads are semi operated by NASA).
How the hell do these people expect to pull it off with out a couple billion dollars and some serious experience??
Have I stumbled into a time-warp? These guys have already done this this, right? So why are people talking like they are going to do it? Maybe that was just a TV (fiction) show I was watching last year when they won the X prize.
“The real reason for travel is to go from here to there, not as a cheap thrill.”
You need to tell that to all the auto manufacture’s that advertise cars with globs of horsepower to drive on highways with 65mph speed limits…
what is a Cantilevered-hybrid rocket motor ?