Burt Rutan On Future Of SpaceShipOne (and Two)

Neil Halelamien writes "In a recent interview with the Desert Sun, Burt Rutan talks about the future of SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo. The bad news is that SpaceShipOne will be retired straight to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, despite getting five different requests to fly suborbital payloads. The good news is that efforts are being focused on SpaceShipTwo, which will carry nine people, and fly higher and further downrange than SpaceShipOne. Virgin Galactic will purchase a fleet of five of these vehicles, which will start test flights in 2007. Virgin Galactic may end up competing with Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, which is rumored to be developing a VTOL suborbital vehicle. Also interesting to watch will be Rutan's involvement with t/Space, one of the companies contracted by NASA to conduct concept studies for the Vision for Space Exploration."

Comments

SpaceShipOne

[wcitechnologies]

The department title for this article should be from the 'Make-NASA-look-dumb' department.

Re:SpaceShipOne

[Rei]

Make NASA look dumb? Oh please, give me a break.

For starters, read Why SpaceShipOne Never Did, Never Will, And None Of Its Direct Descendants Ever Will, Orbit The Earth. Rutan's rocket joyride is nice, but it has nothing to do with space exploration, satellites, or anything else relevant apart from stirring public interest in space (which I do credit him for, along with making a privately funded supersonic craft).

Jeff Bezos's link is weird

[Chuck Bucket]

In the story, why does the link for "Jeff Bezos's" include "Jeff Bezos" but not the "'s"? Kinda weird if you ask me.

As for Burt, he rocks, the A+E documentary on the development and first flights of SpaceshipOne was amazing, the fact that smart people can actually get together and do something that Nasa can't shows the power of the team.

CVb