"Jay Masino" wrote in message
...
It's also easy to forget that what the X prize guys are doing is EXTREMELY
dangerous. The first time one of these guys dies, the entire country is
going to be whining like babies "Why didn't the government prevent these
guys from doing this?!?!".

Why would they? People do dangerous things all the time; usually, as long
as no innocent bystanders get hurt, no one really cares (except friends and
family, of course). I can't imagine this would be any different.

A lot of NASA's manned space flight budget
goes into doing things as safely as possible, and they still have
occasional deadly accidents. In addition, the payload capability is like
night and day.

I assume the philosphy is that the design will "scale" easily. Whether this
is true or not remains to be seen, of course.

I think this effort is a great idea, and Rutan's "feather" design is
absolutely awesome and inovative, but they still have a long way to go
(despite what Richard Branson might think).

It is innovative and cool. But, as someone else pointed out, they didn't
actually enter orbit. It remains to be seen whether the current design
could be in any way suitable for reentry from orbit. The vehicle speed will
be much higher in that situation, and it's not clear to me that the
"feathers" will be sufficient for slowing the aircraft down, nor is it clear
to me that the vehicle has sufficient heat protection even if the feathers
could serve that purpose.

Maybe that's what you mean by "still have a long way to go"?

Pete