To Sail Beyond the Sunset
SpaceShipOne will enter space sometime this month, according to sources at Scaled Composites.
I'm actually more excited by this than the prospect of the shuttle returning to service. I am convinced that grand government programs are a dead-end. If you look at history, most exploration has been (at least at first) driven by the profit motive. Show a way that a buck can be turned in microgravity, and capitalists will be on it like white on rice.
Another parallel can be drawn with early commercial ocean travel, as well as early commercial air travel. Both were extremely expensive, being the domain of the rich upper class. Yet both are now within the reach of most Americans today. I think that commercial spaceflight will follow a similar path. Maybe I'll travel into space during my lifetime, after all.
UPDATE: A "major award" to anyone who can name the reference in the title of this entry.
UPDATE 2: According to their press release, yhey have set a date: 21 June, 2004. Remeber that date: it may go down in history.
