Monday, October 04, 2004
It's Like Living In Space: Spaceship One
Well, the future has finally arrived. SpaceshipOne has completed two successful flights into outer space within five days, granting them the X-Prize and opening the frontier for private commercial spaceflight. Amazing. Virgin has already announced that they'll license the technology and offer space tourism for $200,000 a seat. Is it just me or is that really cheap? More than I can afford, but better than the $20 million Dennis Tito paid. Frankly, I always thought the X-Prize was a stupid idea. I figured anyone who could afford to build a spaceship wouldn't cross the street for $10 million, but I guess they were right. I think it was the goal that was important, the parameters set forth to win the money, not the money that made it work. Kudos to SpaceshipOne and take that, NASA. I still think SpaceshipOne is a stupid name for such an important vessel, though.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
From everything I've heard it has actually cost the SpaceShipOne team well over 10 million to accomplish this, so it's definately not about the money. But, the licensing and promotional impact of being the first private spacecraft cannot be measured. It's like money in the bank.
SpaceShipOne is pretty stupid, but at least Microsoft didn't name it "The Space Flight Machine".
Post a Comment