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Burt Rutan, Brian Binnie, and the rest of the team at Scaled Composites finally did it! In the tone of the famous 1927 Charles Lindbergh flight, Rutan and his gang beat all other private space jockeys to the punch by launching their SpaceShipOne out of the Earth’s atmosphere for the second time in less than a week in Mojave, California! They grabbed the ,000,000 Ansari X Prize, the booty that sat for years waiting for the first private rocketeers to meet its winning criteria (altitude, weight, number of flights, heath of the pilot, etc.).
 | Nose to Nose with
White Knight |
I had long preached to Bay Area folks that San Francisco will enjoy another economic boom considering the many incubating markets such as robotics, genetic tech, and private aerospace. I still maintain that it will largely happen right here, and it now looks like the space boom will happen sooner than I thought, perhaps even before a robotics boom. Of course it will take years for this fledgling aerospace market to explode, but when it does, I guarantee that I’ll be standing right in the middle of it!
I remember when I first heard of the Ansari X Prize back in 1997 (it had already been publicized for a while by that time). Hardly anyone knew or understood what it represented, but I certainly did. Having just spent 5 years in an aeronautics and flight program at Western Michigan University, I really wanted to help pioneer this new industry. I reworked my career strategy around the X Prize and planned a move to the Bay Area mainly to at least join one of these private ventures competing for the lovely spoils. Sadly, I never made it to the desert, but I still enjoyed a booming IT market for a while. And I don’t feel an ounce of regret. I totally congratulate Rutan and his team for pushing humanity one step closer to the Space Age!
 | White Knight and SpaceShipOne
Photos courtesy of Scaled Composites © 2004 |
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Re: wrong caption
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by anonymous |
posted October 10th, 2004 around 04:46 AM
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It certainly is. Fixed!
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Re: Pow! Straight to the Moon!
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by anonymous |
posted October 9th, 2004 around 05:58 PM
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I hate to tell you this but your "nose to nose" is with the White Knight and not SpaceShipOne...
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