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First Private Manned Orbital Flight Announced
Miroslav Ambrus-Kis wrote in to tell us that Inter-orbital Systems has announced that Nebojsa Stanojevic and Miroslav Ambrus-Kis will be the astronauts aboard the first completely private orbital flight. This is part of their bid for the Google Lunar X-Prize.
Those names don't sound like Astronauts... they sound suspiciously like... Cosmonauts! ;)
http://www.beanleafpress.com
Two Interorbital Systems test pilots---Nebojsa Stanojevic, a 'Tweeting' Serbian, and Miroslav Ambrus-Kis, [vid], a 'Tweeting' Croatian
I think we all just died a little on the inside.
They haven't launched yet (and are at least two years from launch according to their plans), so there's no way to guarantee their claims.
If you look at their news page there is a 2004 announcement that they'd be launching a satellite in 2006, but there is no news of an actual launch.
In fact I don't even see news of a flight test of any sort, let alone a full orbital launch.
TBH the website also looks like a pretty fly-by-night operation. You would think that a company with enough money to launch a manned space mission would be able to hire a web designer.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
True. Just like in the old days it was tough to stay in the shipping business after your ship sank.
Understand that once you start the countdown on a rocket most of the money has already been spent (90% to 99% in my estimation) If that blows up without delivering the results that get you payed (satellite in orbit etc...) your business is dead and your creditors crying. That's life.
What is a real problem is that NASA got to be so large and wealthy a bureaucracy that they were able to under employ most of the best rocket scientists for over a generation. Then put their ideas throgh such rigorous scrutiny that nothing new got built. Until finally rickety old space trucks (Challenger etc...) blew up and took people with them.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
He is implying that, by vetoing all new ideas by way of ridiculously over-optimistic design standards, they've been stuck using ancient technology for far longer than is safe, economic, or reasonable.
The irony of the situation shouldn't be lost on anyone.
This company managed to launch one high powered amateur rocket in the 1990s. That's it. Nothing since then. Complete vapor. The only serious orbital launch company is currently SpaceX. The only serious near term suborbital launch companies are XCOR and Virgin Galactic, with the various VTVL / lunar X-Prize people (Masten, Armadillo, etc.) filling in a different but useful niche down the road.
SpaceX finally succeeded in orbital launch after many millions of dollars of hardware and testing. XCOR has 66 manned rocket flights to its credit (the largest share of manned rocket flights worldwide since 2000.) Virgin/Scaled has SS1, Armadillo and Masten have a large number of VTVL flights under their belt and years of hardware development.
Interorbital has paper and mockups.
I fail to see how the Challenger disaster can be attributed to using the shuttle far beyond its intended service life when it was merely 3 years old... As for the bolt, the shuttle in question is Atlantis. The bolt has already been removed and the window certified safe for flight. But good work with the uninformed hysteria.