[FPSPACE] SpaceShipOne's 3rd flight

[David Anderman]

Its interesting to watch the Washington analysts move from: "This isn't 
going to happen", to "well, of course it was going to happen, its just a 
stunt with no significance".  If buyers for the tickets emerge, the next 
statement should be: "Well, they are not really flying into space, its not 
the same as an orbital flight", followed by "ok, so now they are flying 
into orbit, but they're not going to the Moon. Only NASA can go the 
Moon".  This is all like a movie we have seen before.

A much more serious question is if the NASA Moon Mars initiative goes the 
way of earlier, similar efforts (ie dissolves into a technical development 
program in search of a mission), and this commercial space tourism 
succeeds, what will be the role of NASA?

DWA


At 06:20 AM 10/5/2004, DwayneDay wrote:
>I am somewhat dubious of the market for this.  Is there really a 
>sustainable market at that price for such a short payoff?