All posts by Rand Simberg

Busy

Sorry, but I’m working on three Wright essays today.

But meanwhile, go over to RLV News, (which I think should have the name changed to “Space Transport News”) and check out the latest news on the X-Prize.

[Update at 5:26 PM]

According to the same source, Clark Lindsey, there’s a rumor that there may be “special test flight activity on Wednesday morning” at Mojave Airport…

Will Burt Rutan be lighting the engine on SpaceShipOne on the Wright anniversary?

How Long Will It Take

…before a lot of the people who were castigating Bush as a “miserable failure” because he couldn’t find Saddam start saying that catching Saddam isn’t that big a deal?

I suspect it’s already happening.

By the way, I wonder how effective a commercial showing Dick Gephardt repeating the words “this president is a miserable failure” over and over would be for the Republicans ten months from now?

Road To Orbit?

…or a dead end?

Clark Lindsey has a good survey of opinions on the utility of suborbital vehicles, in terms of their applicability to orbital space transports. Regular readers will know that I concur with Dan DeLong and Henry Spencer, and that I have little respect for the opinion of John Pike.

We’re slowly recapitulating manned spaceflight the way it should have been done in the first place, had we not been derailed by Apollo.