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Sir Richard takes Virgin into Space
quizdog writes "The latest issue of
Wired has a story on Sir Richard Branson and the history of the Virgin Empire, focusing on his latest venture of partnering with Scaled Composites and Burt Rutan to bring the
X-Prize-winning SpaceShipOne hybrid rocket technology to the point where paying passengers can slip those 'surly bonds' of the atmosphere. Starting
at just $200,000 a pop - any chance of a volume discount?" We first mentioned this a while back, but Wired's coverage is nice to see as well.
Does this make him a member of the 600-mile high club?
If only Branson would take a virgin into space... what bliss.
No, fatass -- in fact, you're gonna have to pay extra.
Sounds like a promising XXX title. :)
My rights don't need management.
No, Slashdotters... he didn't take one of YOU into space... they are referring to a company in the article.
I thought: Gee, I wish I was that lucky geek!
And on that note let the bad sex jokes begin...
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Coach only costs $50k, but you have to sit on the outside of the spacecraft.
Going into space has been a dream since I was watching Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969.
Paying $200.000 for a trip that has been my dream for over 30 years is cheap, esp compared to the $20.000.000 pricetag for the Russian trip to the space station. it's a bargain and I want one, Seriously!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Space travel is controlled space travel. That means travelling into space, establishing a controlled orbit, and then a controlled descent back to earth. That's space travel.
The Wright Brother's big advance was controlled, powered flight. Lots of people could shoot a projectile from one end of the field to the other, which is all (effectively) that was accomplished by Burt Rutan.
I don't want to be a big, wet blanket here, and I don't want to say nothing has been accomplished; it was a necessary first step. But it ain't space travel. Orbital insertions are two orders of magnitude harder.
I don't want marketing, I want real space travel, and that requires being a little harsh on all the marketing that surrounds this.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
From the article:
But look at the upside. The total price tag [for Virgin Galactic] is half the cost of a single Airbus A340-600 - and Virgin Atlantic ordered 26 of those last summer. In return, Branson gets bragging rights to one of the cooler breakthroughs of the early 21st century, with rocket-powered marketing opportunities that could fuel excitement - and sales - in his entire 200-company holding group.
People often complain about how much stuff like this supposedly costs, but it's interesting to see what a small amount it is compared to how much is typically thrown around in the airline industry. The marketing value alone is probably worth the cost of the fleet.
...but Slashdot has the original
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
Sounds like a bad Japanese Hentai Title: "Sir Richard takes a virgin 3"
considering most of us are virgins...
:/
yes
In December, Inc. Magazine also selected Burt Rutan as Entrepreneur of the Year. The article is a very good read, and gives a lot of details about Rutan's management style.
A snippet:
As a manager, Rutan has proven intuitively adept at inspiring loyalty and extraordinary work. He doesn't worry so much about the formal background of the engineers he hires. He looks for people who share his passion for aircraft design and gives those who have it free rein. Instead of the specialists sought by aerospace companies, he encourages his staffers to remain generalists who can design anything from a fuselage to a door handle and then go into the shop and build it. Chief engineer Matthew Gionta recalls starting off at the company right out of graduate school in 1994 and being handed the project-leader slot on an ultra-high-tech unmanned aircraft. "What I had to learn on the job made my formal education pale in comparison, but I had to learn it because no one else was going to do it for me," Gionta says. "The stress took years off my life, but when you get that kind of responsibility, it's hard not to feel ownership."
Rutan is loath to codify his approach to managing. "I don't like rules," he says. "Things are so easy to change if you don't write them down." But one way or another, he has communicated a few simple principles to employees. One is that when it comes to safety issues -- and in aircraft design, almost everything is a safety issue -- everyone should be quick to raise questions. Rutan makes sure that when people at Scaled point out their own mistakes, they're applauded rather than reprimanded. And instead of extensively analyzing a design before building it, a notion that's axiomatic in the aerospace industry, Rutan pushes his people to get a first version built quickly, test it, and fix it. Says Gionta: "Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding."