Via Clark Lindsey, here's an article on the upcoming SpaceShipOne flight that's more than just a regurgitation of Scaled's press release. It helped that the author interviewed Jeff Foust about it. I only found one problem with it.

The pilot, who will become the first nongovernmental astronaut in history, then will fly the craft back to Earth after it reconfigures from rocket to glider plane.

Emphasis mine. Apparently he's never heard of Charlie Walker, the Japanese news agency guy, Helen Sharman, Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth...

It would have been correct to say that he was the first astronaut to fly on a non-government-developed vehicle, which is the real significance (particularly when one looks at the relative cost).

I also found this part interesting, because I hadn't previously seen much of a hint about Paul Allen's motives:

Crediting Rutan and the Scaled Composites team with accomplishing "amazing things" without government backing, Allen said SpaceShipOne proves that a privately funded space industry is possible. "Every time SpaceShipOne flies we demonstrate that relatively modest amounts of private funding can significantly increase the boundaries of commercial space technology," Allen said in a statement.

Foust said "modest" might be in the eye of the beholder, but Allen's funding had shown that a relatively small amount of money -- on the order of a few tens of millions -- can fund development of a manned, reusable, suborbital spacecraft that could open new markets, such as space tourism.

It's not clear if he has a business plan for follow-on developments, but it is clear that he's been thinking about it. If he starts to compete with fellow Seattleite (Seattleinian?--are either of those correct, or even words?) and dotcom entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, things could get very interesting very quickly.

Rand, you must be pulling our collective leg ... of course it's "Seattleite." By the way, Seattle is glorious this time of year, y'all come on up and see us sometime.

"(particularly when one looks at the relative cost)."

Im no fan of the way ISS was implemented, but
the above statement is apples vs. oranges.
Niether ISS nor shuttle were ever intended to be
a thrill ride and even if they were, they would
be much more of a thrill than the mere altitude
shot the X-prizers have yet to attain.

I wasn't making a comparison with ISS or Shuttle. I was comparing it to how much it would have taken to accomplish the same thing if the government did it.

Can there really be a comparison, though? We know what it cost the first time around (well, I don't, but I imagine somebody does), but doing manned spaceflight for the very first time is bound to be a lot more expensive than repeating the trick forty-odd years later. The government isn't in the business of developing manned suborbital craft anymore, so I think it's more apples to oranges.

Perhaps we could compare the money spent on SpaceShipOne to what the Chinese are spending on their manned program, but their program is orbital. In fact, if I recall correctly, I don't think they even had a manned suborbital launch (though I could easily be wrong). Even if they did, their goal was always orbit, so that's where a lot their development costs went, unlike Scaled Composites'.

I don't think that real dollar comparisons against government-funded and -run efforts will be available until we can start looking at that one magic number, dollars per pound to orbit.

Certainly there can be a comparison, and if I had the money, I'd pay someone to do a parametric cost analysis to allow one. But just intuitively, if NASA had a program to build a vehicle that could take three people to a hundred kilometers twice within two weeks, do you think that it would come in at twenty-five million dollars, or even an order of magnitude more? I'll bet a conventional cost analysis would indicate that it's a several hundred million dollar program.

Marcus discussed the development cost of the X-15 in this usenet thread.

He dug out a $47 billion number.

If that is in 1963 dollars, it works out to $280 billion.

So SSO is an order of magnitude cheaper than the previous vehicle in its class.

(Maybe an unfair apples and oranges comparison though...)

Duncan, do you have your "b"s and "m"s confused?

Consider also that the X-15 costs were for the development of the suborbital vehicle itself--they didn't include the development of the B-52. Burt's costs include not only SpaceShipOne, but White Knight as well.

White Knight is pretty much the earlier Protus design with the SpaceSpaceOne cockpit added. I think the vast majority of the cost was in the SpaceSpaceOne component.

And yes - I appear to have a systematic problem with "illions". Might be my keyboard :)

It may be derived from Proteus (I'm not sure how much heritage there is), but they still had to build a new airplane for the job. NASA used an existing carrier aircraft.

Gentlemen-
I agree w/ Rand (for once outside his 2nd
amendment views), Duncan should certainly
not go into accounting.

As for Rand's comments about "could the gov't
(namely NASA) win the X-prize for 25 million
bucks?" I would also agree: probably not.
Had we built a vehicle that went on a 4-wheel
drive excursion through the Mojave Airport
property after a landing gear "retracted",
there would be a 6-12 month safety review.
We are just not allowed to fail. Period.
Sort of like our military or the people who
were supposed to prevent 9/11. It's all
overhead, and the people doing the work arent
happy about it either (or less capable).

Since I used the pronoun "we", I have to admit
Im a NASA employee. I wish the alt.space crowd
all the luck in the world, so dont go around
accusing NASA of sending out fighter planes to
shoot down the X-prizers.

So the PT Barnum of aviation (CatBurt Rutan) is
going to make a non-X-prize test flight on the
21st. My sources say they're considering a JATO
bottle to make it. Supposedly, that vehicle has
gained 600 lbs (out of a 3000 lb vehicle). The
other loopole they're trying to exploit is that
"safety equipment" counts as ballast toward the
three people required. They're trying to pass off
the extra (?) layers of composite as "safety
equipment" because no one on board has pressure
suits.

Even at this late date, given their argueably
substantial accomplishments, Ill still bet you
an adult beverage they dont make it. I just
hope CatBurt doesnt kill anyone.