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SpaceShipTwo Mothership Makes Maiden Flight
RobGoldsmith writes "Earlier this week images were appearing on the Net showing the WhiteKnightTwo craft doing some tests in Mojave. The earliest tests showed perhaps two of the engines being used, while a later test showed all the engines working and some further testing. Today the four Pratt & Whitney Canada PW308A engines finally carried the craft into the air. The maiden flight of the WhiteKnightTwo lasted just shy of one hour and happened today at around 08:15 local time, at Mojave air and spaceport. Rumors suggest that a Beechcraft King Air was used for a chase plane. The craft will be used to position Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo craft to fly into space; this is estimated to happen around 2010."
The field of personal space travel is opening up!
This is the beauty of capitalism.
And it's only just getting there over 50 years after socialism did it.
Both socialism and capitalism have their places. Capitalism wouldn't have gotten us to the Moon in the 60s. Socialism won't get the masses into space in the 10s. A healthy society has a balance of both.
I would say its not socialism or capitalism that got us into space to begin with. It was nationalism, the military and propaganda. Both the soviets and Americans didn't go into space as a normal part of their economic development / output - they did it to one up each other and to explore military possibilities and advantages from having a pedestal in space. Its still plays a large part in the recent revival of national space programs.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
so true. the private sector won't invest in fundamental research or new and yet unproven technology. that's why you need public research to do these things that push society forward.
nothing has prevented private companies from investing in space research/travel in the past 4-5 decades. they just chose not to because it wasn't seen as "financially viable." and if we'd simply waited for the private sector to develop space technology then we would never have gotten GPS, communications satellites, interplanetary probes, the Hubble Space Telescope, etc.
but now that public research has paved the way for commercial space travel, companies like Virgin Galactic can use public research and the technology developed through public funding in order to commercialize space.
You're talking about motive. I'm talking about economics.
The economic system that took us to the Moon was socialism. The economic system that is launching Virgin Galactic is capitalism.
Apollo was very much about nationalism and militarism, as you stated. It was also about exploration, science and futurism (although those alone, I suspect, would not have sufficed to draw the needed budget). But regardless the motive, it was *only* possible, during the 60s (and even to this very day) as a socialist endeavor.
I don't know why space flight is so fascinating, but this is just incredible. I'm really sad that I was born too late to experience the moon landings, so attempts like this to pick up the slack of the once dominant leader in space exploration are just exciting.
Isn't it funny... I'm sad I was born too early to experience a (manned) Mars landing.
if you want to call the existence of NASA "government obstructionism" then, sure. but that hasn't stopped companies like Sea Launch or FedEx from competing with government services.
that same argument has pretty much been used to lobby for the privatization of all kinds of public infrastructure, which is generally at a detriment to society. you want NASA to stop launching satellites just so an uncompetitive commercial company can have a chance to profit unobstructed, or do you want the government to push technological progress (including commercial technology as well as vital public infrastructure) forward?