Photos Of Rutan's X-Prize Entry 125
burdicda writes "I think you might be interest in what Burt Rutan has been up to, out there in the Mojave Desert. Take a look at these pictures."
Hackers of the world, unite!
Re:Last year called... (Score:5, Interesting)
No Good Pilot (Score:4, Interesting)
...would dare take off without his trusty West Bend timer! (Picture at http://sd-mirror.dumitru.com/scaled/sso042a.sized. jpg [dumitru.com])
West Bend timers...IN SPACE!
(Yes, I know that's actually White Knight's cockpit. Smile and nod.)
Spaceflight video, with floating M&Ms! (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if Mars, Inc. [wikipedia.org] is going to try to license that video for a commercial.
Re:NASA (Score:3, Interesting)
Would you invest it in some crackpot rocketship? There are a whole bunch of people who would.
And yes, NASA has directly restricted the development of private space vehicles, by using tax money to undercut any possible competition. When they loosened their regulations just a little bit some few years ago, some crackpot rocket jockey proposed and built the "Pegasus" launch vehicle which puts small satellites into orbit at a tiny fraction of the cost NASA wanted to charge even with its massive taxpayer subsidy.
Why do you think only Big Corporations can build launch vehicles? Rutan isn't a big company. The Pegasus vehicle is exceptionally cheap to build, but requires a primary launch platform (F-15 style) that by law private people in the US may not own or operate. There's that regulatory burden again.
Bob-