Sir Richard in on the action

http://www.guardian.co.uk/space/article ... 26,00.html

This is starting to get interesting. Four billionares (Allen, Musk, Bezos, Bransen) trying to oneup each other can't be a bad thing for the private space race.

God damn it! He better be financing Starchaser and not Scaled! That will just put us back to one team with all the money and thinking they have all the answers.

Overall, however, this is good. For it's not the engineers but the entrepreneurs who, in the long term, will make private space travel work.

--Ralph

oh uve gotta love that! i was waiting for him to do something after thew global flyer business! hes a man who can get it realy going! get in

no more info until in a few weeks... i'm convinced he's teaming up with rutan and allen, pledging to buy x planes at the point of faa approval for paying passengers (a year+ from now)

I have been following the X-prize progress for a while through this board.

The news of Branson's interest is, on reflection, not surprising given his links with Rutan. But it is certainly interesting. I seem to recall Rutan mentioning ideas involving Jumbo jets for his tier 2 project. At the time, I thought it was just to be provocative, but with Branson being involved (he has one or two of those planes I believejavascript:emoticon(':wink:')
javascript:emoticon(':wink:')), who knows??

Any thoughts?

Thanks Bullspace, this is a REALLY nice article
Isn't there any technology to see into the future for about 2 a 3 weeks ? too bad there isn't... I can't wait

Although much like luke.r I'd like to see more support for the other teams instead of most of the visible investment money funneled into a single team I agree with n54 that he's probably going to go with Scaled. As far as creating a viable space tourist indutry I think that some sort of follow up to the White Knight/SS1 combo has a lot of advantages over the other serious teams. Even though Armadillos DC-X style verticle launch and verticle landing is my own favorite and the teams Starchaser and Canadian Arrow may have a better business plan I think as far as marketing and logistical thinking goes Scaled has the edge with their horizontal launch and landings. It doesn't need to be near water and can probably be setup to be run out of any major airport in the world easier than any of the others, especially when it comes to launch licenses and public/political mindset where rockets are concerned. Yes all the other verticle launch teams will look really cool going up and I'd love to be in one for a ride someday more so than a ride in SS1 but they also have a lot of association with all the videos of exploding rockets on the pad, at least as far as the general public goes. That alone can possibly be a headache if someplace like the Oklahoma spaceport ever becomes a real spaceport. Additionally from what I've read Scaled has spent somewhere in excess of 20 million which seems to be a bit much. It wouldn't surprise me if they already have a lot of work done on a larger tourist version of SS1.

Don't forget the fifth billionaire, Bigelow. He's recently ordered a few Falcon and Dnepr rockets for his company.

very interesting about working on another bigger one, i'm not too sure bout this though, wouldnt we have seen it or heard something about it? unless its still on the drawing board. How would it work? could whiteknight carry a much bigger craft or would they need a bigger one again? i know starchaser couldnt get to fly the rocket here but could a space plane get permission to fly? surely not as dangerous? Think branson is def cooking something with thwm and wouldnt be surprised if he had been in space in the next 5 years

Other than a vague memory I have of seeing a picture of an eight passenger version of SS1 that could have easily come from someplace other than Scaled I've never heard any mention of a larger version. So other than that any thoughts of mine concerning a larger version of SS1 are pretty much speculation.

Although I would say that Scaled is pretty good at keeping things under wraps until they are ready to reveal them. Also Scaled is closely related to the creation of such aircraft as the Long-EZ that if I remember correctly was especially appealing due to lower costs. Another thing I keep thinking of is that I have 2 million dollars set in my head as the price tag for Pond Racer. Granted there are major differences between Pond Racer and White Knight/SS1 but surely not enough (including inflation) for White Knight/SS1 to have cost over 20 million dollars.

Now this is really out of my debth but it would be interesting speculation for someone outside and unrelated to Scaled add up all the known costs of the White Knight/SS1 combo and see if it comes close to exceeding 20 million. If not then I'd say there's something else in that project that we haven't seen yet.

The only evidence I've ever found that Rutan is considering a bigger SS1 comes from this website, which discusses a Rutan presentation for the Society of Experimental Test Pilots in Sep 2003:
Rutan did drop a hint about what he was thinking about doing after SS1. The final slide of the presentation, put on the screen during a brief question-and-answer session, showed what appeared to be a scaled-up version of the SS1 (see photo). A cutaway showed the cabin, with one pilot and ten passengers (arranged in three rows of three people with the tenth person floating above them.) The illustration was simply captioned “A Future Space Tourism Ride?”

So vague that I didn't even get the number of passengers right.

One thing, as far as outsiders trying to figure out the total costs of White Knight/SS1 that might be a bit trickey would be range costs. I'm sure that Scaled is not paying anywhere near the $750,000 range for four flights that John Carmack said that White Sands was thinking about for them to do some of Armadillos testing.

It's probably nothing more than wishful thinking on my part though. It would certainly be nice if several of the teams were further along than they've admitted to.

just got to say how amazing the messageboards have been lately! everyhting seems to be heating up and more people seem to be coming in with ideas, facts and team info, that picy is great! looks uncompfortable though! started to wonder now if oneday i may get the chance to go on a ship like that! its all speeding up so fast! i hope tutan keeps his interests in space and not something else and new again! Anyone know any dates for Branson giving his talk or whatever hes going to do, wonder if he will be there on the 21st?

As far as winning a race to space there's a lot more than just the X-Prise. I don't think that Scaleds current ship can really be used for getting to orbit. I've heard John Carmack state that Armadillos long term goal is to get to orbit but I really think that they can't do that with hydrogen peroxide (I could easily be wrong there). I think Canadian Arrow and daVinci have a real advantage with their experience with bi-propellent rockets and that daVinci has a slight advantage over Canadian Arrow with kerosene. I'm not sure if either of them have stated they'd like to get to orbit someday or not. There's also the possibility of adding stages, which would probably be easier for Canadian Arrow and I think is something Armadillo would like to stay away from. I also don't know what advantages the hybrid rockets may have.

The big question in my mind is who's going to get to orbit first. That's going to be quite an accomplishment.