Wow, Excellent news. I have a feeling that the winner to this will be, you guessed it, Scaled Composites.
This just keeps getting better. A Zero-G jet, Sub-Orbital Space Race, the Virgin Galactic offering trips to space for $170,000, and now this, finally
it looks like the commercail and public side of space is kicken up dust. (Probably because people are getting pissed at NASA for taking there sweet
little time on making public space flights a reality)
I think Scaled will win because they have been hinting they are making a 150 km high version of there ship that can carry 5 or so people. and this
Bigelow company says it wants 160km up and to carry 7 people, it wont take to much more for Scaled to kick it up a notch.
Bigelow's plan would challenge teams to build spacecraft capable of more than just suborbital hops, such as maneuvering and docking abilities with
Bigelow habitats more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) above Earth and reentering the Earth's atmosphere at 17,500 miles (28,163 kilometers) an
hour
However, the biggest problem will be HEAT. I really hope they dont copy Nasa and use those ceramic tiles, those things have to be replaced all the
time, and there very time and maintainence intensive. But if they make the ship out off carbon fiber with a special type off heat absorbing paint
then they could be able to do it, also they wouldn't have as much heat and speed if they do the same thing to this craft that they did to there
current Spaceship One, and thats make the back end of it lift up creating much more drag and slowing it down while at the same time spreading the heat
out.
[edit on 27-9-2004 by Murcielago]
