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Northrop Grumman to own Scaled Composites

Posted by Zonk on from the going-up-in-the-world dept.

Dolphinzilla writes "According to Space.com, Northrop Grumman Corporation agreed on July 5 to increase its stake in Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites (designers of Space Ship One, Proteus) from 40 percent to 100 percent. They have purchased the company outright, marking a new future for the space pioneering firm. 'Scaled Composites currently is working with Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic venture on a vehicle designated for now as SpaceShipTwo, which would carry two pilots and six paying passengers into suborbital space for a few minutes of weightlessness. The company also is building a new carrier aircraft, dubbed WhiteKnight2, that will carry SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of 15 kilometers before releasing it to soar to suborbital space. The two companies last year formed a joint venture called the Spaceship Company to build the new vehicles.'"

3 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. My dad works for Northrop Grumman by katterjohn · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    ..under contract through the USPS; he works with mainframes.

    But of course, anytime he has a problem with his PC, he comes to me :)

  2. love the names by xSauronx · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    the lack of creativity is astounding.

    --
    By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
  3. consolidations by e**(i+pi)-1 · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    Seems like a consolidation also in the manufacturing business. Not a good thing. In the last few years, the focus definitely has not been on anti trust issues:
    • Graphic software: Adobe, is now practically a monopoly. Prizes have become insane since.
    • Media consolidation: Murdoch owns 175 newspapers. Big media are now allowed to become even bigger. Wall street journal is next.
    • Chips: down to 2: Intel and AMD. If AMD would drop the towel, there would be a monopoly. Prizes are still reasonable. Imagine Intel alone.
    • Internet access: in many areas monopoly. Prizes are still high.
    • Operating systems: still a MS quasi-monopoly. Hopefully Apple and OS operating systems will pick up.
    • Phone companies: soon an ATT monopoly?
    • Airline companies: serious consolidation. Delta--American Air-AmericaWest-USAir etc Airline prizes will certainly go up.
    • Search engines: hopefully the competition to google will stay. A monopolistic search engine would not be good, but it would not be surprising if google would be allowed to buy yahoo in the current clima.