U.S. on verge of private space travel

USA Today ^ | 2/10/2004 | Traci Watson

[demlosers]

WASHINGTON

[demlosers]

An artists interpretation of the Xerus rocket, XCOR's first space craft designed to take passengers on vacation to the moon.

[G.Mason]

Old news

The Dimocrats have been travelling there for the past half century.

Good article ... I wuz only kiddin ya.

[SedVictaCatoni]

There's a catch: The spacecraft must make a second flight within two weeks to win. That rule would've eliminated America's first manned spacecraft, the Mercury capsules, which flew only once.

Actually, this eliminates every manned craft that the United States has ever built. No Shuttle ever had a turn-around of two weeks.

[Brett66]

BTTT. This is going to be one of the greatest years in space ever.

[Physicist]

[RightWingAtheist]

Is that from the show which featured Andy Griffith?

[RightWingAtheist]

[Physicist]

Yup. I was 14 when that show aired, and it did make an impression on me. What made me think of it was that the X-prize contestants applied to the FAA for permission to go into space. One of the important plot points of the TV series Salvage-1 was that they were continually running afoul of FAA regulations. (I remember that they skirted the regs by classifying the Vulture as a "hovercraft", there being no explicit limit on how high such a vehicle can "hover".) One thing I took away from the show was the impression that the government does more to interfere with man's exploration of the universe than it does to facilitate it. That impression hasn't changed much.

[RightWingAtheist]

The themes of the show sound pretty similar to Destination Moon. I wonder if the show's writers had read any Heinlein (especially The Man Who Sold the Moon)

I tried to turn my brother on to science fiction by handing him my copy of Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. He couldn't get by the notion of someone winning a space trip by purchasing cereal box tops, and quit after the first chapter.