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First Flight For SpaceShipTwo

Posted by timothy on from the next-time-do-it-from-l.a. dept.

mknewman writes "Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane took to the air for the first time this [Monday] morning from California's Mojave Air and Space Port. The craft, which has been christened the VSS Enterprise, remained firmly attached to its WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane throughout the nearly three-hour test flight. It will take many months of further tests before SpaceShipTwo actually goes into outer space. Nevertheless, today's outing marks an important milestone along a path that could take paying passengers to the final frontier as early as 2011 or 2012."

8 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Space with no space by MyLongNickName · · Score: 3, Funny

    For an extra $50k, I am sure they would be willing to push you out into open space.

    Who wants to start the collection?

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  2. They had to go and name it Enterprise... by ctmurray · · Score: 4, Funny

    It is like one of those time travel conundrums - did we name it Enterprise because we saw the future, or was the future influenced by what we named it here in the present?

    1. Re:They had to go and name it Enterprise... by MyLongNickName · · Score: 5, Funny

      Please see this post for the answer.

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    2. Re:They had to go and name it Enterprise... by tekrat · · Score: 2, Funny

      Even more problematic -- now they have to go back and change all the Star Trek movies and episodes, where some cast member explains "all these vessels were named Enterprise". I know it happened in ST:TMP, and probably in at least one Next Gen episode...

      They'll have to CGI in some other spaceships into the display. Heck, Star Trek violated it's own continuity by naming the NX-01 'Enterprise', when the NX-01 wasn't visible in the display in ST:TMP.

      Ah... nevermind! It's just a frickin' TV show.

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  3. Re:Space with no space by Jurily · · Score: 4, Funny

    2 to the negative power of a phone number.

  4. Better headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    A much better headline for the article would have been "Virgin spaceship gets its cherry popped".

    1. Re:Better headline by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 3, Funny

      Nah, the cherry will be popped when it actually gets up into space. This is more like a first kiss, with no tongue.

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      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  5. Re:Space with no space by moosesocks · · Score: 2, Funny

    It really is the biggest perk of working as a telephone operator...

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