U.S. Okays Virgin Galactic Plans

Aron writes "Space.com reports that the U.S. Department of State's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls has approved collaboration of technical details between Scaled Composites of Mojave, California and Virgin Galactic of the United Kingdom to build passenger-carrying suborbital spaceliners. The next suborbital ship will be a nine person vessel." From the article: "Details about the new company were unveiled at the Experimental Aircraft Association's (EAA) AirVenture air show held July 25-31 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The Spaceship Company will build a fleet of commercial suborbital spaceships and launch aircraft. Scaled Composites is to be under contract for research and development testing, as well as certification of a 9-person SpaceShipTwo (SS2) design, and a White Knight Two (WK2) mothership to be called Eve."

Comments

Re:Launching

[AKAImBatman]

...and the pure buyancy of Rutan's ego.

Hey now. Let's go easy on the insults. Just because he's got fans galore doesn't mean the guy has an ego to match. In fact, most of the interviews I've seen with him have shown him to be quite modest. As an aviator he does good work. Let's leave it at that. :-)

Re:Sending Slashdot virgins to space

[cnettel]

As you didn't post under any ID, I assume you don't have one. This means that there are, approximately, 900.000 perfectly valid /. virgins in line before you.