Leonard David has a useful report on Esther Dyson’s recent conference on personal spaceflight and personal jet flight.

I have to say that she certainly has jumped into this with both feet.

And this was an interesting comment from Virgin Galactic COO Alex Tai:

Tai said he’s looking for that “Netscape moment” when the public space travel business rockets to stardom – just like the internet browser did when it kicked-started the dotcom boom of the mid-1990s.

“We have taken in $25 million from an interest of 80,000 people…with our tiny sales force,” Tai told SPACE.com. “There’s a huge appetite for this offering once we get out there…once we prove that it’s something that’s going to be safe, really fun to do, and is repeatable. What will happen then is that, suddenly, everyone will see Virgin Galactic making an awful lot of money. And that is the next ‘go’ moment.”

Tai speculated that when Richard Branson decides to fund his next big venture, and he sells 10 percent of Virgin Galactic for $100 million, people will hunger to be part of the public space travel business.

“But at the moment, these guys don’t want to invest because there hasn’t been that Netscape moment,” Tai continued. “It is being held up because Virgin Galactic is the gorilla in the room. Who is going to take Virgin on? That’s a shame because I believe it’s a massive market. I would much rather there’s competition getting ready now,” Tai concluded.

Yes, a smart businessman recognizes that competition is necessary for a healthy industry, particularly when it’s first getting off the ground (in this case, literally).

Leonard David has a useful report on Esther Dyson’s recent conference on personal spaceflight and personal jet flight.

I have to say that she certainly has jumped into this with both feet.

And this was an interesting comment from Virgin Galactic COO Alex Tai:

Tai said he’s looking for that “Netscape moment” when the public space travel business rockets to stardom – just like the internet browser did when it kicked-started the dotcom boom of the mid-1990s.

“We have taken in $25 million from an interest of 80,000 people…with our tiny sales force,” Tai told SPACE.com. “There’s a huge appetite for this offering once we get out there…once we prove that it’s something that’s going to be safe, really fun to do, and is repeatable. What will happen then is that, suddenly, everyone will see Virgin Galactic making an awful lot of money. And that is the next ‘go’ moment.”

Tai speculated that when Richard Branson decides to fund his next big venture, and he sells 10 percent of Virgin Galactic for $100 million, people will hunger to be part of the public space travel business.

“But at the moment, these guys don’t want to invest because there hasn’t been that Netscape moment,” Tai continued. “It is being held up because Virgin Galactic is the gorilla in the room. Who is going to take Virgin on? That’s a shame because I believe it’s a massive market. I would much rather there’s competition getting ready now,” Tai concluded.

Yes, a smart businessman recognizes that competition is necessary for a healthy industry, particularly when it’s first getting off the ground (in this case, literally).

Another government-funded overpriced manned launch system. And one from a system that has institutionalized pork-barrel spending, since it’s an explicit requirement that each country in ESA get work commensurate with its contribution. Sure, that’ll work.

Jeff Brooks reprises the old arguments about relative cost and value of government programs, and whether we can afford funding for NASA, and proposes that we increase it. Well, of course we could easily afford to spend twice, or three times, or ten times as much money on NASA. We’re a very wealthy country.

But the real point is not whether the money we spend on NASA is worth it relative to other agencies, but whether or not we’re getting good value for the money. I’d argue that, if the goal is to have a robust, space-faring society, that we’ve gotten very poor value for the money to date, and simply spending more money doing the wrong things (usually because of porkified pressure from the Congress) would make matters worse, not better.

Until space actually becomes important as a goal in itself, it doesn’t matter how much money gets thrown at it. And if it were, then we could probably achieve most of what we want with the available funding, as long as it were spent more intelligently toward that goal.

TGV doesn’t get as much attention as some of the other NewSpace firms, but here’s an article about a recent successful engine test, from Norman, Oklahoma, where it’s based.

“Anonymous” over at Space Politics thinks so (see sixth comment):

You

Here’s another story on Peter Homer, at the International Herald Tribune. Not much different than yesterday’s offerings, but it’s nice to see this getting so much play in the press.

The fruition of Rand’s idea for a Centennial Challenge prize competition for a space suit glove is the front-page story of next week’s New York Times Magazine coming out tomorrow, but available today in New York and on the web.

Spoiler alert…

[Update on Sunday by Rand]

There’s also a piece at the Christian Science Monitor, as a commenter notes.

Continue reading Gauntlet Picked Up →

Mike Griffin doesn’t read blogs.

On the surface, I’m sure that he could make a good argument for why he shouldn’t, that many would find compelling. He’s a busy guy, he’s got plenty of other things that he needs to read, why waste time watching a bunch of Interweb people arguing about stuff they know nothing about, yada, yada.

The problem is that, in the twenty-first century, if you ignore the blogosphere, you can get blind sided, as more than a few Senators discovered yesterday.

The administrator may not think much of what people are saying out here, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no significance to it, or that it has no effect on policy and public mood. The blogosphere, and that includes the space blogosphere, may not have as large a readership as the Washington Post, but its readership is not without influence. Congressional staffers read it, and when they do, and read about problems that they’re not necessarily hearing about from NASA, they have to wonder if they’re getting the straight story when Code L comes up to the Hill. What’s being said in the blogs is often a canary in a coal mine of a potential political imbroglio, that is ignored at a bureaucrat’s, or politician’s peril.

If Mike isn’t reading blogs, he’d better make sure that someone he knows and trusts is, and is keeping him abreast.

Henry Cate’s experiment seems to be thriving. Emily Lakdawalla (about whom I’m always curious as to what country of origin her last name is) is hosting this week’s edition.