Dear fellow space nerds: Chuck Hards wrote:
Neat accomplishment...
Agreed.
but the claims of NASA "shaking in their boots" are plain old hype and premature by decades. True, but after watching all of the NASA-TV and Discovery Channel coverage and reading lots on the web I don't remember anyone from the X-Prize foundation or the Scaled Composites team making such claims. For that you need to listen to the media.
The technology and hardware for the private sector to do this has existed since WW2. Yep. No doubt if they'd been given the OK von Braun and Company would have done it before war's end (anyone remember Eugene Sanger back in the 20s?)
And remember it took over $20 million to win $10 million. $10 million is only the beginning. As y'all might have seen in this morning's News, I included an article showing how folks with big bucks are already lining up for flights. And Virgin Airlines has ordered several enlarged vehicles for paying passengers. I saw where Burt Rutan said they're going to donate StarShipOne to the Smithsonian, but first they want to make some money off it.
It will be decades, at least, before the private sector has any "heavy" lifting ability... As long as they can lift me, that's all the heavy lift I'm looking for for now.
...and really just a footnote, not the major milestone that the press is pushing. I've given this a lot of thought but keep coming back to comparing it to the first Wright flight which didn't actually do all that much in the way of performance but it did show what *could* be done and lit a fire under those who went on to do so much.
Go, Burt, go! Patrick p.s. If you have not seen it already the latest from Jib-Jab is at http://www.jibjab.com (the original is there too).