This looks good. In a week or so SpaceshipOne/Scaled Composites will most likely have won the 10M Ansari X prize. Will the passengers on the second flight be Paul Allen (sponsor) and Burt Ruten (CEO of Scaled Composites)? They have indicated their interest. Branson/Virgin intends to be the first airline to send tourists to space, within 2006-2007. Virgin has announced an agreement with Scaled Composites for the latter to develop and manufacture the vessels. SpaceDev made the engine and hardware for SpaceShipOne. http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2787812 http://www.xprize.org/home.php http://www.spacedev.com http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=spdv.ob
I just handed you a treasuremap for finding one or more gems. Some people are rich or on their way to becoming rich due to their abilities to spot and grasp opportunities. Maybe you're just not one of them? How about focusing your attention elsewhere, maybe your efforts are better spent on finding a rich bitch?
do you belong in your swimming pool like a fish? some poor african would probably consider you a rich guy with an ego.
Lets thank Big Government for taking the risks and employing the right people to help make space travel possible. While the free marketeers are just discovering flight into the darkness of space, Big Government has been doing this for 40 years. Imagine where we'd be if we always had to wait for free markets to do something.
...the US/USSR race to space broke certain barriers that would have been difficult with private sponsorhip. At the time, only governments appear to have had the deep pockets needed to fund such grandiose operations. Whole nations had to be summoned to support the space-activities. Although the first peoples/countries to break certain barriers recieved their fair share of grace, the real winner was mankind. Today's race is different. The vessels are not particularly difficult to develop with off the shelf components and technology. Complex calculations can be conducted much more easily and in less time than ever before. The time for development has been reduced dramatically and hence more complex tasks can be performed. There is not really that great a difference between space vessels and modern airplanes (and the emerging space-industry can learn alot form the realtively mature aviation industry). The engine has to work in a vacuum, meaning there is no O2 that the fuel can be burnt with, but the chamber/cockpit is a pressure chamber just like in a modern airliner, which for the most flies at what, 30'000 ft? With a spae-vessel you basically just need a different kind of engine. And who makes these engines and has been awarded a 45 mln dollar contract by the US govnt? None other than SpaceDev I believe governments cannot run such innovative organizations as efficiently as businesses, and govnts deep pockets are not really neccessary. Maybe 250 mln has been spent by different teams on winning the X-prize, but SPaceShipOne has spend only 20 mln. Had any governments tried without there being a competition like this, they would most likely have spent 2 bn while developing an inferior product and no sustainable/profitable business organization.
The space shuttle is dead. Long live private space travel. Today SpaceShipOne flies to the skies. I am keeping my shares for the long haul.
There is a dramiatic difference between SpaceShip One and the Shuttle. Not to discount what Burt Rutan has done because I belive it is to date one of the greatest achievements of modern flight but it in no way compares to the Shuttle. Private industry will be many decades away from having a similar capability.
Why is that? Please elaborate. What capabilities are you talking about? What does the shuttle do that's so extraordinary? IMO give a private co 5 years of R&D funded by internally generated cash (from satelite dev/launch/repair and tourism and other potential revenue generating operations) or external financing and I believe we'll have private spaceships that can carry tenths if not hundreds of passengers into space. Moving great weights of goods/ppl between planets is another thing of course, although this is the first step towards reaching that goal. Virgin will be the first company to launch a commercial offering. Branson is crazy/visionary enough to go for it.
when discussing space travel, i heard a reporter mention that it's dangerous and people could die doing it. THAT'S THEIR CHOICE, FUCKIN MORONS!!!