2 Ships destroyed in less than a week.

The series of failures we saw last weekend appears to have been stopped--
Canadian Arrow reported a successful test today. See http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/xp ... 40814.html.

Full coverage can be found on xprizenews.org

Not at space.com

The article and the correct link are both found on xprizenews.org however here is the correct link for your convenience anyway:

http://space.com/missionlaunches/xprize_arrowdrop_update_040814.html

thank you

no problem, glad i could help out

I'm seeing a lot of hope in here for the Da Vinci Project to hit an absolute fail mark in their attempt for the Prize. I think many people, while it's great to root root root for the home team, should be looking at the bigger picture here - commercialized space travel.

Which ever team ultimately wins this historical event will undoubtedly receive much applause from the world - their spacecraft will not necessarily be the one that lands all of the contracts which wind up transporting our children to Australia in an hours time.

Personally, I'm already impressed at the multitude of ideas that have come from nothing short of gray-matter into conceptiualized ideas into prototypes and finally a working product. The engineering that has been displayed to date by all teams involved should be highly commended!

While I would love to see one of our 2 Canadian Team's take top-prize (remember, we are home to hockey, the telephone, birthplace of wireless technology, Canadarm, Insulin, IMAX, Java & Superman to name only a few), I am happy to enjoy the technological and engineering advancements of the entire race!

Long in the short, let's not hope for anyone to have a disasterous failing, but cheer everyone on for a complete success - even if they don't have a chance in space of winning!

! I definitely do not want any team to have any sort of disaster. most of whats on the board is an expression of concern -and yes, doubt- of the safety of a rocket that is going to go from what we saw at the roll-out to a fully operational vehicle in under 60 days. But this does not by any means suggest that we hope something bad happens! We are more worried than anything and we just hope that everyone gets back to earth safely on all teams!

I don't think anyone here wants to see Da Vinci fail, but if the reports of their progress are correct, it's just hard to take them seriously. To announce your launch date in 60 days before you even do any of your serious testing is just irresponsible.

But there is still nothing I'd like more than to have the Da Vinci fans gloating and saying "I told you so" after a perfect launch. (I guess the one thing I would like better is for Armadillo to surprise us with a launch, but they are too open about their progress for any surprises).

It's just not going to happen.

The most worrying missing aspect of DaVinci's test retinue, to me, is the balloon. Also, it looks from recent statements from Feeny that the ballute reentry design may not have gone out the window (no pun intended). Their only going to test a scale baloon between now and launch time, so we can be pretty sure they' ve never done that till now. OK, it's a balloon, but it will have to be a pretty hefty balloon. If the 1/8th (IIRC) scale balloon is just bunched up with 8-10 more, that presents a lot of extra complications and field support issues.

I am cheering DaVinci on, and I hope they make it. The real winner of the Xprize is the person who does it cheapest, and in that regard, DaVinci may be more groundbreaking then Scaled.

If, of course, it actually works.