Spaceship One, going for two of two

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message news:p3x8d.191112$D%.115727@attbi_s51...

So, what exactly does this event tell us about NASA?


That they quit doing this sort of thing about 45 years ago when the X-15
program shut down.


I've always wondered why NASA abandoned this method of getting into space.


Probably because manned suborbital flight isn't particularly useful.



I've heard a couple of reasons:

1. X-15 technology was impractical to scale up for orbital flights. (This
seems strange, but I'm no rocket scientist!)
2. Kennedy's announcement that we would go to the moon in less than ten
years meant that America needed heavy lift capability NOW, not later, and
that it was much easier and faster to simply scale up Von Braun's V2
technology.

I was at Edwards as a child, listening to the X-15's sonic booms from my
grandparent's home. I've always wondered why they didn't take the X-15
technology to the next step?

Maybe Rutan will, now that he's beaten the X-15's old altitude record...?


Every Space Shuttle flight beat that record.