Virgin Galactic's Quiet News: Virgin Now Owns The SpaceShip Company 112
RocketAcademy writes "While all eyes were focused on SpaceX, which is preparing for another launch to the International Space Station, Virgin Galactic quietly put out a press release. Virgin Galactic has acquired full ownership of The SpaceShip Company, which will build production versions of SpaceShip Two. Ownership was previously shared with Scaled Composites, which built SpaceShip One and is building the SpaceShip Two prototype. There have been rumors of strained relations between Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites. This news, which was not announced until after the close of business Friday, raises some interesting questions about Virgin's relationship with Scaled and its plans for the future."
Re:Quietly? (Score:4, Insightful)
How does a company quietly put out a press release?
By releasing it after the close of business on Friday, prior to a three-day holiday. Better still, do it while another company is grabbing all the headlines.
Re:Interesting questions (Score:5, Insightful)
The more work private companies to do on this problem -- that is, the putting people in space and on planets problem -- the better we get at it, the cheaper it becomes, the more sustainable the industry becomes, all of which enable more science to be done. There's also the whole deal of creating jobs for Americans (and other countries), which is a nice bonus. It's the same model as Tesla -- build an expensive sports car for the wealthy, use those profits to use a somewhat less expensive sedan, and on down the line.
Maybe it doesn't fit into your Platonic ideal of how this should go, but if you have a better idea then float it. Unless you were suggesting that spaceflight is a waste of time compared with the problems we need to solve on this planet, which I don't think has to be a binary answer.
Re:Interesting questions (Score:3, Insightful)
It is not that we have programs, but that we spend on one thing instead of another.
Who is this WE you speak of?
Virgin is a private company. They will sell their services to whoever pays them.
Or are you suggesting someone like you should get to dictate where they spend their money?
Money is never WASTED.
All the money Virgin spends is spent here on Earth, in the US, putting people to work all up and down the supply chain. How is this different than having the government taking from Virgin to give to some homeless drunk? Oh, wait, Virgin will be taxed, as will the space tourists, and the engineers, and the guy that sweeps Virgin's hangers, and waters their corporate lawn, and those taxes will prop up the drunkard, and the salary for those that support him, and we get both frivolous space tourism AND social programs.
Money is never WASTED.
Re:Interesting questions (Score:1, Insightful)
you've got enough to live a very comfortable life, and there's no relationship between comfort and a desire to create. In fact, quite the opposite is true: It's adversity that is the mother of invention.
- why did Steve Jobs not quit in 1985? He never spent the money that he even made by that time in his life, so why did he bother?
Why does anybody bother once they make enough to live off of for the rest of their lives comfortably? It's because people who are good at this do not want to stop doing it, it becomes an incentive in itself. Being able to take an idea to a full implementation and see it succeed is something great in itself.
Of-course if you are always an employee you don't see it that way, you want to retire as soon as you possibly can, but of-course as an employee your value is limited by what the market says you are worth with millions of others just like you being available to do the same thing as you are applying to. When you apply for a job, you are asking one of the people who you think are not more productive and valuable than others to hire you.
But really, you are making a 'moral' argument about something where your morals clearly do not belong. What does it mean somebody is not 'millions of times more productive' than somebody else? Of-course they are.
Not everybody who makes more money is more productive, but many people are millions of times more productive than many other people. A person who started and developed a successful business that sells millions in products or services is clearly more productive than somebody who is hired as an employee, that's because without them that business wouldn't exist in the first place.