Here's a cool aerospace company

www.xcor.com...
They've got some great vids and pics of a airplane/rocket hybrid.

This just sounds like fun...

our goal is profitable transportation to Earth orbit.

Sign me up. But wouldn't it make sense to be working closely with NASA for a vehicle of this type? Just seems like duplication of effort to me.

Handheld 160lb thrust engine???
160lb


[Edited on 10/24/03 by crayon]

Ahh, but then you'd have to share the profits with Uncle Sam... Nah...

Personally, I've been looking into some of the companies that are working on orbital flight... I'd like to get some stock, and get in on the ground floor of them, so that when one or more of them actually pull it off, I can not worry about retirement....

Lol.....Good thinkin' Gazrok.Keep an eye out for Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites also.He's one of the top contenders in the Xprize competition.His brother Dick Rutan is the test pilot for XCOR.

Here's an update...
December 04, 2003: XCOR Aerospace passed a significant milestone recently when it logged its 2,000th rocket engine firing. This is the total of the five types of engines the company has designed and built in-house. Cumulative run time is 224.7 minutes, or 13,482 seconds as rocket scientists like to measure run time. Igniter-only operations are not counted in this tally; just engine runs with both igniter and main stage components. About 2600 additional igniter tests have been performed in development, life testing, and preflight checkouts.

In all these 2,000 runs, XCOR has yet to experience an engine explosion or hard start. While we are optimistic that we have designed out the causes of engine explosions, we never run without a blast shield surrounding the engine.
www.xcor.com...

These guys are getting good.