Orange Cone

I've been noticing the huge amount of coverage in this story yesterday - but you are the first person to point to a new technical achievement - could you explain what is technically advanced about ths launch? It seems mostly a story about economics - we launched something on our own, the private sector but did anything happen that NASA hasn't done MANY times before?

If this was something about a guy in his garage accomplishing what once took a million engineers and so on, that'd be the tech story, I could see that one, but I haven't heard it that way, only that it's privately funded...

I guess this all sounds really dumb-ass, I am very interested in hearing someone else's opinion on this!

I'm not a space scientist, so I won't try to defend the details of their technology, but they did manage to create a wholly original craft design (unlike, say, the Russian Space Shuttle, which looked a whole lot like the American one) using a novel propulsion system (of rubber and nitrous oxide). Then, unlike some guy in a garage, they managed to not just launch it once, but to create a PROGRAM that thoroughly engineered and tested the design to the point that they were confident it was safe to fly with passengers. And they did it with a couple dozen people in the course of 5 years (which is apparently when Rutan first sketched out what the craft would look like), rather than thousands of people that a traditional program would cost.

Ultimately, of these things ARE in the service of economics. They're not the first people to make a vehicle that flies into space. But the economics of what they did point to the fact that there must have been an immense amount of technological innovation in order for them to be able to cost-effectively achieve their goals.

That gets to the heart of the X Prize. The goal of the prize, I feel, is not to put more people into space. Humans have proven that can be done. The real goal is to stimulate innovation by giving people a concrete reason to innovate outside the resources and bureaucracy of a government project. Which is not to say I agree wholly with the Libertarians who were there waving their "Government Bad!" banners, but that government environments are not particularly conducive to radical innovation and it's good that there's an environment for that.

Here's a Slashdot post by someone who sounds like he knows his stuff, and he mentions some aspects of what makes this flight technologically unique:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=111908&cid=9495736

...but yikes did I use a lot of superlatives in that description paragraph! Tremendous, huge, clockwork, breathtaking, nervewracking. The editor in me winces and I apologize for the purple prose but I was and am clearly impressed.

The most important sociological impact of the space program really has been that image of the whole earth. The big blue marble image really changes the way we understand our place.

Space stations and planetary missions will continue to be so complex and vast that only governments can manage them. Every astronaut has reported a shift in their philosphy after looking back at their home planet.

The business model of the Spaceship One investment is space tourism. The real legacy of the x prize may be in the hearts and minds of the captains of industry who will become astronauts.

Thanks for all the non-sneering resonses to a skeptical post. It's sorta becoming rare to have that happen; I appreciate it and I appreciate the insights shared.

Dan Gillmor's column today kind of addresses the same issue. Registration required and it may not be online forever, but the page is http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/8990726.htm