This number jumped out at me:

Xcor eventually raised at least $19.2 million, according to Crunchbase, a platform that tracks fundraising.

Virgin Galactic has spent hundreds of millions of dollars. One wonder what might have been had XCOR gotten even twice as much as they did.

I disagree with this:

The companies took very different approaches to the challenge of reaching space. Virgin Galactic uses a twin-fuselage carrier aircraft to hoist a space plane known as SpaceShipTwo up to a high altitude; it releases the smaller craft, which ignites its own rocket motor to blast into space. Earlier this month, the company reached space with its SpaceShipTwo vehicle for the first time on a test flight.

Using another vehicle or booster to propel a crew craft to space is considered a “much more traditional approach,” said Sonya McMullen, assistant professor of aeronautics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. But Xcor would have the Lynx climb all the way up under its own power.

“They really took the hard technological approach to the same problem,” McMullen said.

Even for suborbital, there’s not that much benefit to air launch. Single-stage to suborbit is not a technological challenge. While XCOR may have underestimated the technical challenges of Lynx, I doubt there were any that couldn’t have been solved with more funding. Of course, the uncertainty of the market size probably didn’t help in that regard. But losing that ULA contract, after the Air Force cut the funding, was the final straw.

And as I’ve often said, despite the failures (so far) to get a commercial suborbital operation going, there are no intrinsic reasons why it has to be difficult. XCOR had a good technical approach that ultimately failed to find sufficient investment, and VG made poor initial business and design choices that has resulted in them becoming a money sink in a sunk-cost trap for over a decade, despite the much vaster financial resources. As I noted in the last post, I expect that Blue Origin will finally show the way and allow us to determine the market, next year. Maybe even VG finally will as well.

Business, Economics, Space, Technology and Society

The Year In SpaceX

December 30, 2018 Rand Simberg 6 Comments

A good summary, over at Wired. They didn’t accomplish all they planned, but it was a hell of a year, regardless, and next year promises to be better.

Along those lines, I’m a little disappointed that Blue Origin didn’t meet its 2018 goal of test passengers for New Shepard. I wonder what the issues were? Anyway, maybe next year will be the charm.

Administrative, General

Kitten Update

December 28, 2018 Rand Simberg 14 Comments

The gray one has figured out how to climb stairs. This could be a problem.

[Afternoon update]

When I say figured out how to climb, I meant that she is willing to come down them now that she knows she can go back up. They’ve spent their entire life with us (i.e., since Saturday) upstairs, because our house is upside down, with the living area upstairs, and the bedrooms (including my office) down. They’ve been living in Patricia’s upstairs office/bath, but now at least the gray one will have the run of the house, including my office. The black one is a little less developed; when she fell halfway down the stairs on Sunday, I had to carry her back up. But it’s only a matter of time until they’re both heading up and down.

[Update a while later]

These kittens are hilarious. I set down two bowls of food for them. One of them starts eating, and the other insists on eating from the same bowl. I pick her up and stick her face in the other one, and then she starts to eat from it.

[Update Friday morning]

Last night, we named them: Ashe and Ember (Ashe is the gray one, and I spell it like Ashe Schow’s name: she approved).

[Bumped]

History, Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

The Year In Review

December 28, 2018 Rand Simberg 3 Comments

…from Dave Barry:

APRIL

…when the abandoned Chinese space station Tiangong-1, which has been anxiously watched by scientists as its orbit decayed, plunges back to earth and, in a worst-case outcome, fails to land on attorney Michael Avenatti, thus enabling him to continue appearing on CNN more often than the Geico Gecko.

Meanwhile President Trump, faced with — among other problems — a continuing immigration crisis, increased Russian aggression in Syria and a looming trade war with China, launches a barrage of assault tweets at what is clearly the biggest threat to the nation: Amazon. Trump is forced to back down when the retail giant threatens to suspend the White House’s Amazon Prime membership and cancel delivery of a large order placed by the Defense Department, including six nuclear submarines, two aircraft carriers and a missile-defense system with a five-star average review rating from other nations.

Responding to alleged Russian infiltration of Facebook and massive breaches of user data, the Senate Committee of Aging Senators Who Cannot Operate Their Own Cell Phones Without the Assistance of Minions holds a hearing intended to answer such probing questions as:

▪ What IS Facebook, anyway?

▪ Where does it go when you turn off the computer?

▪ Is there a print version?

▪ Is Facebook the one with the video of a cat riding on a dog?

▪ How the heck do you get a cat to do that, anyway?

Patiently attempting to answer these questions is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who wears a suit and tie and does a solid job of impersonating a regular human, except for not blinking and at one point having a tentacle emerge briefly from his left ear.

Abroad, the big news is a historic summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. In what observers see as a major breakthrough, Kim agrees to sign a letter of agreement explicitly acknowledging, for the first time, that he has exactly the same hairstyle as Bert, of Bert and Ernie.

In sports, Patrick Reed wins the Masters Tournament, prompting jubilant Eagles fans to celebrate by destroying what little is left of Philadelphia.