White Knight Two Unveiled

xanthos writes "Sir Richard Branson was at the annual Experimental Aircraft Assoc Fly-in to show off EVE (previously known as White Knight Two), the launch vehicle for Virgin Galactic's commercial space operation. Test flights for the vehicle are slated for next year with the first paying passengers going up in 2011. What surprised me was the following from the article: 'So many people have signed up already, Whitehorn said, that the company has collected $40 million in deposits with orders to build five spaceships to meet the demand.' Will this mean that the $200k price tag may be dropping?"

Re:"passenger's"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you heard? That's how we make word's plural on the Internet.

In other new's, the contraction of "you are" is "your", and "it's" means "belonging to it".

Re:But it's not - it's suborbital.

[mcgrew]

Where's my 2001 space station?

Did you lose that thing again? It's outside, parked next to my flying car.

Re:"passenger's"?

[damien_kane]

Haven't you heard? That's how we make word's plural on the Internet's.

There, FTFY

hybrid nitrous oxide and rubber rocket engine-WTF?

[zooblethorpe]

Can anyone more familiar with the rocket design explain this perplexing quote?

This is how it works: The launch vehicle takes off like a plane, carrying the spaceship between twin booms; once it gets to a certain height, the spaceship drops from the launch vehicle, firing its hybrid nitrous oxide and rubber rocket engine to climb vertically at almost four times the speed of sound; once it reaches 62 miles - the edge of space - it floats back down and uses its wings like a badminton shuttlecock to re-enter the atmosphere and land like a plane.

So, does this thing literally burn rubber? :D

Cheers,

Re:Stupid Economics

[ukyoCE]

THIS

We gotta convince the content industry there's DRM on Mars

They foot the bill for space exploration, AND we get to kick them off the planet.

NASA has surplus space station in six years

[peter303]

Some people at NASA are talking about deorbiting [washingtonpost.com] the ISS as early as 2016. This report is probably a red-herring to raise mroe funds from Congress. But some people are thinking about dumping it. Russians think it can last until 2020 or 2030. Partners could pick it up if US drops out.

Re:But it's not - it's suborbital.

[NoahTheDuke]

Why do you hate paragraphs so much? What did they ever do to you?! WHYYYYYY???