X-Prize

[David Wilson]

I am home from work today with a bad cold but just watched history being made. The science channel carried live coverage of the second official flight of Spaceship 1. She was slated to reach 328 thousand feet but she reached 360 thousand. Looks like they have won the Ansari X-prize for the first private spacecraft to reace an altitude of 60 miles, land safely, and repeat the flight in the same craft within 2 weeks. The craft must carry a pilot and eather 2 passangers or a pilot and the equivelent weight of 2 passangers. Spaceship 1 is built by a company called Scaled Composits which is haeded by Burt Rutan. He is the man who designed and built Voyager, the first aircraft to circle the earth without refueling.

[Martin Shupe]

Burt Rutan is our generation's aviation equivalent of Thomas Edison. The man is brilliant, and I knew when he set out to win the X-Prize, that he would have the best shot. You are correct in stating that history was made today. I was out driving around, but the event should have been carried live by all the networks.

[Jim Becker]

Yes, I was glad to see the news when I returned from lunch. That's quite an achievment and bodes well for commercial space service in "our" lifetimes, at least for some folks of means and for business purposes. The technology may also help spur creativity in the non-space, but high-altitude, long distance transportation area and that would be nice.

[Michael Stafford]

Ain't capitalism great? Isn't America great? What a country...

[Jim Barrett]

Definetly very cool stuff. I work for Paul Allen's company Vulcan... there is incredible excitement in the office this AM. Paul gets involved in some really fantastic technology....

JimB