Burt Rutan

Even with this 3 week delay, I don't think that the other teams have a chance at this point. Armadillo will probably get their vehicle in the air soon, but think Rutan's a shoo-in. Is that the general feeling around here?

It depends on how you define "soon." Following their engine work pretty closely, it would appear that Armadillo has a way to go. Once they do get satisfactory engine performance, they still need to integrate the entire vehicle. Maybe I'm wrong, but it appears what they have right now is an engine design, some decent avionics, a fuel tank and some sort of a capsule, but not a fully designed vehicle. I hope I'm wrong and they can get something flying within the next couple of months.

All the other competitors don't have much except for big funding problems. I doubt most of them will even have flyable full scale vehicles before the end of next year.

Say what you will about Burt Rutan, but he was extremely smart in competively outsourcing the engine design, while it appears the other teams continue to try to reinvent the wheel.

Looks like HARC will be flying some stuff early next year. I expect DaVinci to do flight testing as well.