At least not yet. Doug is right: It’s Bezos versus Branson (and XCOR).
Yes, it's Bezos versus Branson (and XCOR). The tortoise has pulled into the lead in the suborbital game. https://t.co/XNqDcl4jDx
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) December 23, 2015
The quote from the Virgin Galactic employee is brutal.
Jerry Grey says that we will have to rely on it for a while longer. This is a very good history. Interestingly, he stays out of the AR1/BE-4 fight, and makes no specific recommendation of what should replace it, only that something should.
I love the opening of this piece from James Dean:
In more than 65 years of launches from these shores, a rocket landing anywhere near its launch pads meant something had gone terribly wrong.
Not anymore.
Nope.
[Update a few minutes later]
He quotes Elon as saying that the rocket “costs” sixty million, but isn’t that the price? It has to cost less than that for them to make a profit. And I don’t think they’d want to reveal the actual cost, for business reasons, but it would be nice to know just how much margin they have, and how much they can reduce the price if it’s fully reusable.
[Update a few more minutes later]
And here we have an article from Mike Wall, where he quotes Elon as saying it cost $16M to build (if true, that gives them a huge profit margin and room to drop prices in the face of any competition). I saw others reporting that on Twitter on Monday, but no one really clarified if he said “sixty” or “sixteen.” It would be nice to get the actual number.
[Update a while later]
[Update a couple minutes later]
And Jessica Orwig’s.
[Update a couple minutes later]
[Afternoon update]
Here‘s SpaceflightNow’s take on it.
Yesterday’s space success makes Bob Zimmerman optimistic about the future.
This is pretty funny. How an insurance company lost its mascot to Internet porn.
Star Wars proves they’re clueless about it.
Of course, #Gamergate has been demonstrating that for many months.
Jeff Kluger has an interview with the Science Adviser. This is obviously not true:
There are certain fundamentals that everyone who looks at the challenges of space exploration [recognizes]: a heavy lift rocket is one of them, a crew capsule is another.
Not everyone. And even if we saw that as fundamental, it doesn’t mean they should be developed, owned and operated by NASA.
SpaceX and Orbcomm have put out a press kit. A successful landing (along with Blue Origin’s recent successful flight) would be a nice early Christmas present to space enthusiasts.
[Tuesday-morning update]
Congrats to SpaceX obviously. Here are some nice photos of the landing. Here is Tim Fernholtz’s story.
[Update mid morning]
Here’s a detailed technical explanation from Spaceflight101, and Lee Billings has the story as well.
…has been postponed. Elon tweeted that their Monte Carlo runs had indicated a slightly higher probability of landing success tomorrow, and Orbcomm said that they wanted to continue to analyze static-fire data and allow an extra day to pre-chill the LOX. Someone at NASASpaceflight indicated that it might be that, though launch conditions are slightly worse tomorrow (80% chances of good weather as opposed to 90% today), it might be less wind, with less convection to warm the oxidizer. as Jonathan McDowell points out, this may be the first time they’ve ever delayed a launch to improve the chances of a landing, but the customer seems fine with it. As I noted to him, every aircraft operator takes into account landing conditions prior to takeoff.