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Flight Testing Of Burt Rutan's X Prize Entry

Posted by timothy on from the rutan-tootin' dept.

evenprime writes "The X Prize website is reporting that Burt Rutan's company Scaled Composites did some flight testing on their SpaceShipOne/White Knight launch platform on May 19, 2003. Next up: drop tests. There's also a nice write-up at the BBC website."

2 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Huge things at stake by Ignorant+Aardvark · · Score: 0, Troll

    In the contest to win the X Prize, there can be only one winner. The runner up wins the Darwin Award. Is Burt Rutan's entry X Prize worthy, or will he join the thousands of other people who've killed themselves spectacularly to win Darwin Awards?

    --
    Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
  2. Why space tourism is not a good idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Space tourism is a horrible idea. People are only fascinated by space because of a glut of bad science fiction that has proliferated in the past 50 years. Now, people are willing to put their lives at risk to fulfill some childish fantasy. It is sad to see people wasting all this energy on useless pursuits when it is far better spent feeding the poor and fighting for justice. Isn't there enough suffering in the world? Do we really need more headlines showing obituarial photos of a dozen "brave" american astronaut-wannabes who died because one of the ground control engineers watched a little too much Star Trek and read 1 too few books on aerodynamics?