Perhaps we should start taking wagers - which will get cancelled first, this or Star Trek: Enterprise?
- Both get cancelled before anything worth reporting happens - Star Trek: Enterprise gets cancelled first, but we don't care since we're sipping cocktails in microgravity with Richard Branson. - Virgin Galactic vanishes as quickly as New Coke. - The V.S.S. Enterprise has a smashing debut, and the producers of Star Trek: Enterprise quickly update the credits in a cross-promotion deal between Viacom and Virgin, claiming "we knew it all along"
posted
That bearded fucker isn't going to call it the Enterprise is he? And besides, with his track record, would you want to go on any sort of vehicle with him? I'm sure I read somewhere that anytime he's known to be travelling on one of his planes or trains, there's a rash of last-minute cncellations. . .
posted
It looks like the Galaxy Quest ship. I wonder if there's a captain's chair.
-------------------- "It speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow, it's not all going to be over with a big splash and a bomb, that the human race is improving, that we have things to be proud of as humans." -Gene Roddenberry about Star Trek
Registered: May 1999
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posted
You realize of course that if this happens, this will be the first spacecraft to actually go into space with the name "Enterprise".
....but I'm not sure I want to call this thing a true spacecraft or spaceship. Maybe we need to modify it with "sub-orbital", since that's what it is. Sub-orbital spacecraft/spaceship/spaceplane/whatever.
posted
If it actually works the government will be all over it and certainly ban civillian missions (as anyone with enough cash could equip a sub-orbital with spy cameras).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Not without government approval, there arent.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I guess...still, the private sector's success rate with launching satelites is no great shakes so some government ovrsight is required if only to prevent parts raining down on populated areas.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Oversight is covered by private contractors working within international treaty regulations. It isn't really government oversight. Unless it is a spy or military satellite, the governments of the world have very little say about it.
posted
They determined (via those regulations) what can be payloaded though and at what orbit over where so it's about the same thing.
Several companies would need to make reliable single-stage vehicles at about the same time or using radically diffrent systems really open space to commercial ventures though: else you'll have onecompany claiming "propriatory rights" by achieving return missions first.
It needs to be more of a national focus (here in the US).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
In either case, if the X-Prize and its spin-offs can give the various and sundry, extremely cobweb intensive space programs around the world a healthy kick in the pants... well it would certainly be worth it.
-------------------- I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit, and on the slitted sheet I sit.
Registered: Nov 2003
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posted
Lee's hatred of Richard Branson frightens and confuses me.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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