Richard Branson and Burt Rutan Form Spacecraft Building Company

I disagree. You are thinking in terms of government spending

Disagree all you want -- but the engineering says otherwise. A reusable orbital vehicle is far more complex than a suborbital skyrocket. Simple fact of life. And yet it cost tens of millions of dollars just to do the skyrocket. It costs Boeing close to a billion dollars just to design and build a new airliner -- why would you expect a reliable manned space vehicle be any less? (And it has to be reliable to be commercially viable.)

PLENTY of people have said that it's the same thing. Everywhere I hear, "NASA bettery look out. Rutan's gonna replace it." Of course, that's pure BS. Rutan's mission is to put tourists at the edge of space, maybe even an orbit if they're lucky. Meanwhile, NASA is delivering payloads and robotic explorers to other planets in TRUE spacecraft.

Of course Rutan's systems are cheaper.
He's accomplishing what was already accomplished by the USAF and NASA over 40 years ago. The platform is different, but the technologies were derived from decades of experimentation and development that came before them.

Another thing about Rutan's "spacecraft": It was designed to do ONE THING; carry passengers to the edge of space and return to Earth. In its limited concept, it does well. And that's why it's remained inexpensive. But, we had the same problem when we put men on The Moon - that's all we were capable of doing. Our entire "space" program was really a "Moon Program" and very little of the derived technologies would have been useful for true space exploration. Now, when NASA performs an experiment, it's not looking at the experiment as the end result, but as a "technology demonstrator" for future goals. Scramjets, reusable satellite delivery vehicles, all of the current developmental projects are very far-reaching, even if the current shuttle fleet is not.

Comparing NASA and Rutan's missions and techniques are totally different. NASA is past the point of getting to the edge of space, so now it's about payload and speed.

Now, I'm not knocking Rutan, because he's accomplishing exactly what he set out to do and he's doing it in a relatively inexpensive manner. And, I'm not a Big Government person. Someday, hopefully, private agencies will almost completely replace NASA and will bring free market ingenuity and competition to space. Until then, I'm going to continue to support NASA when it's appropriate.

And who will forget those quaint fools the Wright Brothers who everyone got all excited about when they flew an airplane just a few hundred feet! Mind you there was no room for passengers and it wasn't able to lift any cargo. There were those who said back then that these fellows were a threat to the railroad industry. Well that was ridiculous.

Your ancestor pointed out how great it was that the Wright Brothers had flown a plane, but how it had nowhere near the capabilities to do what the railroads were doing in terms of passengers, cargo and distance. It was surely going to take many, many years and a whole lot of money before those planes could ever accomplish anything really big.

You are thinking linear my friend. Rutan and his exploits will take off exponentially as high end "joyriders" pony up the big bucks which he will use to build slightly better and slightly bigger craft that go farther and do more each time at a cheaper price. That in turn will bring more paying customers, more investment dollars and more improvements.

I'm 44 and I expect that thanks to Burt Rutan and NOT NASA, I will be flying an orbit or two before my days are up.

Good points on both sides. I posted this on the Shuttle Grounded thread:

This whole episode reminds me of a sci fi book by Kurt Vonnegut, "The Sirens of Titan". Rutan is the Winston Niles Rumfoord of today, except that he's not a wealthy playboy. Rumfoord flew his privately funded spaceship straight into a "chrono-synclastic infundibulum", just to see what will happen. I think there was a line in the book where NASA announces that it couldn't engage in any further flights and on the same day, Rumford announces his plans. "That was class."

Today is Rutan's well-deserved day in the sun. It's more than just the standard 15 minutes of fame -- he's been an icon for more than 20 years. Unfortunately, today it seems to be at the expense of NASA, but our history with privately funded aero ventures is a strong one -- the Wright brothers vs. Langley comes to mind.

As for the airplane, there is consistent and logical debate that commercial aviation has NEVER been economical nor profitable. It's government subsidies that keep commerical aviation afloat, without a doubt. Aviation has its uses when it doesn't try to compete with trucks and trains, but it loses every time when you try to add up the figures.

My concern is that Rutan's designs are scalable. Can he take his "spacecraft" into space (complete with actual orbits) or has the current technology reached the goal? Other than space tourists, what commercial uses are there for his Starship?

I think Rutan's doing the right thing in pioneering private space travel, but he's a long way off from NASA and people need to realize that.

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