Wednesday, June 02, 2004
A DATE WITH HISTORY
Burt Rutan and Paul Allen's privately funded and developed rocket plane Spaceship One will attempt to put the first non-governmental astronaut into space on June 21. This announcement marks a significant break from past policy for the Rutan/Allen team, which has previously refused to make announcements about their flight program before specific milestones are attempted. Given Rutan's typically taciturn character, I assume this means they have very high confidence of success. They should, since the Spaceship One system is dead-solid simple.
For the non-space-geeks, note that this will be a "space flight" in the technical sense that the vehicle will ballistically pop up out of the Earth's atmosphere, but it will not be an orbital flight. Rutan's bird doesn't have the power for that. But it's exceedingly cool, nevertheless! Unfortunately, I'll be out of the country when this happens...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:43 AM
