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Subscribe to RSSStratolaunch Systems touts its space transportation system.
The band is getting back together: Seven years after winning the $10 million Ansari X Prize, software billionaire Paul Allen and aerospace guru Burt Rutan are teaming up with SpaceX and other top-flight rocketeers to create an air-launched orbital delivery system. They say the venture will require the construction of the largest aircraft ever flown.
Allen unveiled his new company, Stratolaunch Systems, at a Seattle news conference today. It marks his first space venture since the partnership with Rutan to build the prize-winning SpaceShipOne rocket plane, which became the first privately developed craft to reach outer space in 2004.
The Seattle native, who made his fortune as a Microsoft co-founder, said he's long dreamed of following up on SpaceShipOne's success with another revolutionary space effort. "You have a certain number of dreams in your life that you want to fulfill, and this is a dream I'm very excited about," he told journalists and VIPs at the headquarters of Vulcan Inc., which serves as the umbrella company for many of Allen's ventures.
Rutan, who retired from Scaled Composites in April at the age of 67, will serve as a board member for Stratolaunch. He said Allen was the "perfect team member and customer" when they worked on SpaceShipOne. "I'm looking forward to doing that again," Rutan said.
The new venture is significant for the revival of the Allen-Rutan partnership, with the addition of California-based SpaceX and Alabama-based Dynetics as new suppliers. It's like putting Roy Orbison and Bruce Springsteen on the same music stage.
Other players include Gary Wentz, a former chief engineer at NASA, who will serve as Stratolaunch's CEO and president; and former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, who is on the board. Griffin said the Stratolaunch air-launch system could make spaceflight more routine by removing many of the constraints associated with ground-based launches. However, getting the company off the ground will require a large investment as well as "the courage to fly through failure to get to success," Griffin said.
Allen agreed that his latest venture won't come cheap. He said he'll spend "at least an order of magnitude more than I put into SpaceShipOne." Allen's investment in SpaceShipOne was estimated at $25 to $30 million, which suggests he's prepared to put at least $250 million to $300 million into Stratolaunch.
Mothership plus rocket
The Stratolaunch system would super-size the arrangement used for the SpaceShipOne launches: Scaled Composites has been tapped to build a carrier airplane that weighs more than 1.2 million pounds, with a wingspan of more than 380 feet. That tonnage rivals the weight of the Antonov An-225, which is recognized as the world's heaviest aircraft. Stratolaunch's dual-fuselage plane would be powered by six 747 engines, and would require a 12,000-foot runway for landing.
Wentz said the venture already has a contract to acquire two Boeing 747s. The engines as well as other subsystems would be used on the Stratolaunch super-carrier. However, Scaled Composites President Doug Shane told me that the 747's metal skin wouldn't go onto the plane. Instead, the new plane's wings and fuselage structure would be fabricated from advanced carbon composites.
Rutan joked that the plane was "relatively close to building, as soon as we can get a building big enough."
The plane would be capable of flying up to 1,300 nautical miles to reach its launch point. SpaceX would provide a shortened version of its Falcon 9 rocket for the next phase of Stratolaunch's route to orbit. Wentz described it as a "Falcon 4 or 5." The multistage booster would be attached to the plane using a mating and integration system developed by Dynetics, and released during the mothership's flight at 30,000 feet. After release, the 490,000-pound rocket would light up to send commercial and government payloads weighing up to 13,500 pounds into low Earth orbit.
Elaine Thompson / AP
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, right, shakes hands with former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin as aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan looks on, following a Seattle news conference to announce the creation of Stratolaunch Systems.
Griffin said the Stratolaunch system would initially serve "a thriving commercial satellite market, small to medium" — the type of market previously served by the now-retired Delta 2 rocket.
Wentz said the rocket to be developed by SpaceX would not compete with SpaceX's own Falcon 9, which can lift 23,050 pounds to low Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral. Allen said "we're in a different class of payload size," and SpaceX's vice president for government sales, Adam Harris, concurred. "There's room in that [payload] class for something new," Harris told me.
Allen said the Stratolaunch system won't take on human passengers until the system's safety and reliability are fully demonstrated. But if and when it does, "we could be very competitive" with the $60 million-a-seat fee that the Russians will be charging NASA over the next few years, he said. Rutan suggested that people could make up a significant share of the payloads in the longer term. "I don't think there's any limit to the number of payloads in that category," he said.
Stratolaunch's briefing materials said more than 100 people have already been assigned to the effort in California and Florida as well as in Alabama, where the company is headquartered. Flight tests of the plane are due to start in 2015, with the rocket added to the test phase in 2016. The plane will be tested at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, but the base for launch operations has not yet been selected.
Re-entering the space race
Allen and his partners say air-launched systems can send payloads into space at lower cost, with greater safety, more flexibility and faster turnaround time than ground-launched systems. That would be because the carrier airplane effectively gives the rocket a head start on its ascent to orbit, and can launch from a variety of midflight locations. But the launch industry is becoming more competitive, thanks in part to the rise of SpaceX and smaller rocket companies such as Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace.
Someday, Allen and Rutan may find themselves in competition with Virgin Galactic, which has incorporated SpaceShipOne technology into the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane and is expected to start commercial service in the next year or two. Today, however, Virgin Galactic issued a statement welcoming the new venture.
"It takes me back to the exciting conversations the three of us had in 2004 when we first started talking about commercializing SpaceShipOne technology," Virgin Galactic's founder, British billionaire Richard Branson, said in the statement. "We've come a long way since then; WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo are built and flying, and we have nearly 500 private individuals and science researchers signed up and ready to fly. The potential of the industry we are leading is immense but will depend on the continuing emergence of truly safe, affordable and transformative technologies. Burt and Paul's record in that respect is unmatched. I hope that in due course, in partnership with Stratolaunch and others, we will be able to repeat the pattern that has worked so spectacularly well in the suborbital sphere, for orbital spaceflight.”
Watch the full Stratolaunch Systems news conference in Seattle.
The commercial space race may have changed over the past seven years, but Allen clearly wants to get back on the track. At the end of his autobiography, "Idea Man," he dropped a broad hint about the plans announced today. "I'm just now considering a new initiative with that magical contraption I never wearied of sketching as a boy: the rocket ship," he wrote. "Someone, after all, is going to have to get behind SpaceShipThree."
But does Allen expect to ride the Stratolaunch into space someday? During the news conference, the 58-year-old billionaire said he'd probably wait until a good number of flights have been flown. "I'm actually a really conservative guy in some aspects," he confessed.
More on the future of spaceflight:
- Next steps in a new space race
- Private-sector space age turns 7
- SpaceX chief aims for Mars
- Boeing runs hard in the new space race
- Future spaceflight goes virtual at Sierra Nevada
- Blue Origin spruces up its rocket report
- Cosmic Log archive on the new space race
Last updated 11:20 a.m. ET Dec. 14.
Correction for 4:20 p.m. ET Dec. 13: I originally wrote that two failed NASA missions (Orbiting Carbon Observatory and Glory) were launched using air-launched systems — but they were actually launched from the ground, using Orbital Taurus XL rockets. Sorry about the error. I had the Orbital Pegasus XL in mind, which has recorded a string of successful launches from the air going back to 1997. The Taurus XL was derived from the air-launched Pegasus XL.
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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Orbital's Pegasus XL is air launched. The Taurus XL is launched from a traditional launch pad.
This is a great idea! If they can make the booster reusable then the costs will come way down and perhaps then the dream of routine space travel for the common man will finally become a reality.
Ugh, sorry about that, TallTom and others, was racing to get the first version of the story done before driving out to press conference. That's been fixed, and I'll be updating the story with info from the briefing.
Wow, this is going to be a really tricky road to hoe, legally.
Rutan dealing with a non-Virgin customer/partner could possibly have conflicts of interest-type implications given that these are both midair launched orbital activities (even if Spaceship 2 is only sub-orbital...still, it's capable of more).
I hope that this doesn't screw up a great design for launching heavy loads into space only to end up making a bunch of rich lawyers richer!
This is precisely why billionaires are good for society!
yes it is a...tricky row to hoe...but i can't let the weeds... take over my grass patch...man...
@ baronvonmoneybags
I'm pretty sure that people were saying the same thing about Andrew Carnegie and JP Morgan and the railroads and steel. Right up until the two of them decided to start pushing out their competition by any means necessary.
Read up on these people. They were very shrewd businessmen, and are both standing testaments to why the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and collusion became illegal business practices.
Innovation is good for society. Billionaires are a byproduct on capitalizing on good ideas and untapped/under-exploited markets. I'm not against billionaires, but I am always wary of monopolies and powerful but inefficient businesses winning over better competitors with undue market influence and unfair practices (probably not something I would put on a cover-letter if you plan on applying to AT&T or GE).
Everyone knows about Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, etc....illegal practices should never be condoned. That being said, the more money that we have in the hands of intelligent, capable people the better off society will be at a potentially exponential level. Redistributing wealth from the brilliant to the idiots of society does very little to create progress.
Our Military has better.
@ baronvonmoneybags
The gold that the nobility kept in their castles did little to help the serfs that were indebted to work the land for life.
I'm not against allowing people to make as much money as they can, but keep in mind that in 90% of instances, someone making that much money is only doing so because they are capitalizing off of the productivity of many people below them.
The part that needs to be especially pointed out is that the greater one's dependency on others' productivity, the more that person is also making use of public services. Things like public education ensure that most workers are able to read, write and perform at least simple mathematics. Additionally, that capitalist is making use of public utilities that not only power their operations, but also support the general livelihood of their staff. None of these costs are directly levied onto the individual employer, but are allocated across all tax-paying brackets for support. It's a positive externality
The capitalist also is subject to an aggregating effect. As they and others like them, as well as public employees are paid, those workers utilize a portion of their earnings to consume, which generates a demand that ultimately migrates into more business for the capitalist. The more the capitalist pays their employees (within certain tolerances), the more their employees spend. Additionally, the more an employer employs at a reasonable wage, the more consumers become available.
...For the last 30 years, middle class wages have stagnated and American jobs are migrating overseas, and it has taken acts of the Federal Reserve and Congress to keep debt cheap to act as a bandaid over a bullet wound that is a rising CPI in the face of middle class incomes that barely match the artificial inflation that the Fed has conjured up. Note also that capitalists make use of the cheap debt (subsidized largely by borrowing from the SSI Trust that the middle class supports) both for their businesses and their marginal borrowing and supports a vast degree of overall market liquidity.
Lastly are decreasing marginal returns. People only spend so much money. As a ratio of earnings to savings, millionaires and billionaires save A LOT more than they spend while the middle and lower classes spend nearly as much and sometimes more than they earn! What this means is that for every dollar that a middle-class worker earns, nearly ALL of it goes back into the economy in the form of demand, and that demand is taxed on the local level through sales taxes and fees while the worker productivity is taxed as Medicare and SSI contributions (of which the middle and lower classes pay the vast majority of).
Conversely, every dollar that a capitalist earns, only a small fraction of it moves back into the economy in the form of demand while a certain percentage of it moves back in slowly through federal and state taxes. The rest of the balance adds to the churn in the securities markets, or adds to the liquidity ratio of banks...in either case, stock price has little influence on worker pay below the upper management-level and banks don't rely heavily on deposits when they make loans...meaning that the capitalist's savings has little effect on supporting market demand.
Round and round the cycle goes. But making the wealthy, more wealthy does not have the same beneficial effects at all levels. I contend that we are well past the decreasing marginal returns from allowing the wealthy to become increasingly wealthy through capitalization.
That's great ! Hurray for the private industry and it's achievements lately.
This is outstanding. I am hopeful that other incentive mechanisms similar to (or perhaps including) the Ansari X prize will develop new metrics/milestones and new cash prizes to reward such innovation. Hopefully angel investors and other folks with deep pockets will step up to the plate to help develop this and similar ventures. I strongly feel that humankind's future in manned space flight is dependent largely, if not solely, on the ability to get equipment and personnel into orbit much more cheaply without sacrificing safety. Using non rocket-powered flight (i.e., the carrier plane) to get the vehicle up past at least the first 40,000 feet or so (not sure what exactly "high altitude" refers to in the article above, hopefully past 50K feet) would save a huge amount of energy and lower launch costs so much.
I wonder why the shuttle was never designed like this. Wouldn't being able to re-use the first stage of a launch, which is what this essentially is, have saved us a LOT of money?
@ Byron Raum: This would never have been practical with an orbiter of the Shuttle's capacity/size.
However, there have many similar proposals in the past, for a small orbiter (approximately 6-8 people or 5000 pounds payload) that could be launched in this manner...
All these rocket ships are based on the chemical rocket motor, the Chinese have been using these types of rockets since 1232. If these guys want to develop new spaceship technology they should throw the chemical rockets in the trash, develop systems that work with magnetism, the Zero-Point Field, Quantum Entangling or all the above. We see examples of this technology almost every day in our atmosphere! The chemical rocket motor is so passed it's time!!!
I agree with you in theory; no question that chemical rocket powered flight is truly inefficient. But none of the other technologies you mention are ready for prime time yet; same story with the best theoretical payload-to-orbit system imagined - the space elevator. So in practice, chemical rockets are really about all we currently have and all we can afford to do at this point to get an object into orbit.
The major improvement that these folks are trying to accomplish is to bring the price of payload-to-orbit down dramatically by circumventing the use of chemical rockets for the first perhaps 40K, 50K, 60K feet of ascent. Using that big aerodynamic lifting body of the wing and 6 jet engines shown in the picture in a controlled and relatively slow ascent, and saving all the rocket propellant within the under-belly rocket for ascent from the stratosphere up into orbit. This is like the X-15 (which was suborbital and dropped from a B-52) on steroids.
Yes, I understand your point, but as long as we are shackled to one of the oldest technologies around we really are going backward. Use the chemical rockets if you must, but at least put as much money and time into a way to get past them. These are really really smart guys, and this seems to me "Much ado about nothing". I mean put the rocket on a airplane and when you get high enough lite the fuse. A nuclear submarine, when all is said and done, is just another boat with a steam engine. "To Boldly Go", as it were.
Up until the time of the continental railroad
it took about six months to travel from
New York to San Francisco.
Either on sailing ships around the horn or
overland with covered wagons.
After the railroad was completed,
it took six days.
With jets, airport to airport,
about six hours.
Aboard a Mercury Space Capsule,
about six minutes.
All this happened in less than 100 years.
The Wright Brother’s first
powered flight was in 1903.
They flew for about 12 seconds.
In 1947, 44 years later, Chuck Yeager
flew faster than the speed of sound,
mach 1.07.
22 years later, in 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon.
Buzzlightyear, you are correct, getting the first 50,000 feet or so for "free" (with respect to the rocket ignition) is a tremendous advantage in itself over a ground-based / vertical launch. Even more important, however, is the boost into the thin stratosphere, at approximately 550mph going in an easterly direction, allows the rocket to be lauched in an almost horizontal position. That is to say, it is expending, from the very moment of its ignition, almost its entire effort in achieveing acceleration, tangential to the earth's surface. With the 550mph horizontal speed boost from the airplane-carrier, along with the earth's rotational speed of about 900mpH at the latitude of south Florida, the rocket motor has but one task, and that is to tangentially accelerate another 16,000mph, already in the thin air and already pitched over. THIS is what achieving orbit is all about, as opposed to the phallic symbol on steroids we think of as a rocket, taking off from a vertical standstill to penetrate the heavens.
"All these rocket ships are based on the chemical rocket motor, the Chinese have been using these types of rockets since 1232."
The wheel is even older. What's your point?
"If these guys want to develop new spaceship technology they should throw the chemical rockets in the trash, develop systems that work with magnetism, the Zero-Point Field, Quantum Entangling or all the above."
Show us that propulsion (and in vacuum) of any sort is even physically possible with any of that physics, and then maybe we'll listen...
Until then, Newton's Third Law is all we've got. This is not about age, it's about what's known, what's possible, what works.
Meanwhile, Google "NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts" It's not that no one has tried...
Magnetism is only good for short range, though an electro-magnetic rail gun could be useful to shoot some payloads to orbit.
"Zero-point energy" is bafflegab made up by folks who badly mis-understand quantum physics.
"Quantum entanglement" may become useful for communication, but has no practical application for propulsion.
So are there alternatives to chemical rockets? Yes. The electro-magnetic rail gun, already mentioned. Various types of ion drives, with much higher specific impulse thus using less propellant to achieve the same speeds. Nuclear rockets, though serious technical and safety issues remain. Laser powered rockets, though aiming issues remain. The space elevator - very expensive to build, but very cheap to run.
OK buckwheat..lets not let Intellectuals..make a big guess
I love string theory...BOTH Large and Small...Quantum Mechanics but gravity,magnetism, and (time is not a dimension) and this is why they combine too be a superforce.
The whole point is if we spend time and money in technology that is 600 or 700 years old where do we begin to see if there are any alternatives. To fly all you have to do is push a curved surface thru the air and you have lift, big enough curved surface and you have the "Spruce Goose". I am sure that there is a way ahead to a new technology beyond chemical rockets, it's either buried in the science of the quantum theory or just off the grid. I'm just saying I know we have to use more efficient ways into low earth orbit, chemical rockets with benefits, but at the same time with same type of expertise we need to be thinking of alternatives. First the idea, then the technology. After all, America invented the banjo, and jazz.
So to continue the logic.. We're really wasting our time with tossing chunks of metal carrying people into the atmosphere to begin with. What we really should be working on is a method to create worm holes, bend/fold space-time, field portals, object beaming, etc to move ourselves (or objects at the least) from point A on Earth to point B on planet XYZ in whatever distant universe. None of the propulsion tech we are really considering will allow us to realistically visit other solar systems or galaxies. The prize in space travel ultimately comes when we can establish humans on other planets or potentially get us to the point where another civilization can boost us along or destroy us for our stupidity. If only we had the trillions of $$$$ and intellectual energy spent on war dedicated to space travel. But then the world is not ran by scientists but by politicians.
Yes, If we have to use the old technology, fly a rocket into the air when it gets high enough, then lite the fuse, so be it. But we see evidence everyday around our world of a technology that already exists, and far surpasses us in flight dynamics. A technology that appears to be used by different sources. For more information on this, see Edger Mitchell, former NASA astronaut, about what he has seen, during his long career. So, we have a new way, using old technology, to get payloads into low earth orbit more cheaply, that's great. It's just not very exciting. Where is the "Steve Jobs" of aero-space engineering?
Echoing TallTom, TaurusXL uses the stages of the Pegasus, but starts them off on the ground with a Castor-120 first stage. Both satellites were lost due to a problem with the payload fairing jettison.
Very exciting news. I remember my supervisor drawing something like this in the early 1990s.
Yes, you're right, thanks for setting me straight.
Thank you for being responsible for your article Alan Boyle. MSN needs more folks like you!
Just another Tom stating that the Taurus XL is not a Plane launched rocket. The last 26 Pegasus launches were successful.
Please fix your post.
Got it fixed, sorry about that.
Way cool: kudos to Paul Allen, Burt Rutan, Elon Musk and all of the others moving private enterprise spaceflight forward.
Hi, Alan. I would like to confirm TallTom's comment. There is a mix-up in the article about rocket types. The two NASA probes were ground-launched by the Taurus XL system. Only the Pegasus and Pegasus XL were air-launched rockets.
Yes, you're right, thanks for setting me straight.
Right on Paul Allen and crew.
Too bad Paul Allen's business sense doesn't translate to the basketball court.
Umm..why is that relevant here?
This is so f-ing cool!!! I'm such a cynic that I never thought this would happen, I'm super excited to follow this emerging industry and its technologies!
Cost to orbit, per pound is...?
They're keeping that somewhat under wraps for now, but Paul Allen did say that if they ever get to the point of carrying passengers, they "could be very competitive" with the fee charged by the Russians, which will be escalating past the $60 million per seat level by the time this system is flying. Allen also said paying for this venture would cost him an order of magnitude above what he invested in the SpaceShipOne effort. Since his outlay for that has been estimated at $25 million to $30 million, that would put his development cost in the range of $250 million to $300 million (or maybe more).
Alan, I seem to recall that back in the day when giants walked the earth and men walked the moon, the cost was on the order of $10,000/lb-mass of payload, and that was in 1970 dollars (something like $50,000 in today's dollars. To quote that great rocket scientist Yogi Berra, "A nickel isn't worth a dime anymore."). What was the cost/lb-mass at the end of the Space Shuttle era? How much it costs the Russians now, any idea?
I'm guessing that this developing tangential launch technology, in full flower, should easily cut today's figures in half. The only technology that could possibly best it, is a future space-elevator.
Another thing...since airplanes don't work on the airless moon, the way to do this at a lunar base is to build a long, t-railed ramp. Does not have to be too terribly high since the moon is airless and the orbital velocity is only something like 2500 mph as I recall. Rocket can achieve that by the time it reaches the end of the ramp.
I think I did go through that arithmetic at one point... Shuttle payload capacity was about 50,000 pounds and cost $1 billion to launch, making it $20K per pound of payload to LEO. The figure I've seen quoted for Soyuz is $2200 per pound, and SpaceX et al. say they can match that.
If any of these are 'private enterprise' why are they using NASA launch facilities? Are these private enterprise like the SAT-Phone private enterprise that went bankrupt and only when the bankruptcy court ordered the satellites decommissioned did the US government raise its hoary head and protest the potential loss of a CIA/NSA front.
Actually, they're not using NASA facilities right now, although Kennedy Space Center would be a prime candidate for takeoffs and landings.
It is a misconception that the government stake in orbital/space exploration activities is dwindling, just because so many corporate entities are surfacing. And just because the shuttle program has been deemed obsolete. The military is still totally involved, so is NASA, NORAD, and other governmental agencies. Relieving the total burden of cost from the backs of taxpayers is a definite plus. Besides, good old American competition can rise to the fore, develop technologies the government would drag its bureaucratic feet with; provide JOBS, and possibly develop technologies that promote social improvements rather than simply military priorities. That's not to say many improvements have not been biproducts of space exploration and its development of space technologies, but a reduction of costs passed on to taxpayers is always the biproduct of healthy competition within the private sector.
Silverback,
That's an excellent point I failed to mention in my posts above. There is real potential here to provide jobs and promote scientific/social improvements. Additionally, the capacity to get structures and importantly fuel into orbit cheaply translates into the potential to use an orbiting structure (like the Space Station) as a fueling and assembly waypoint to boost things further "up" on their way to, for instance, the moon or Lagrange point space stations "half way" between the earth and the moon. Here's a quick link for further thought...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point_colonization
These clowns are taking way too long
i can get high for free... these billionaires...just ain't figured it out yet...
Can't identify with it. It lacks national pride. I want my big government space program back.
(sigh) That's half the problem. Do you want regular, affordable, airline-like access to LEO (where bigger things can be assembled to use there, or go elsewhere)...or do you want big, flashy expensive, but infrequently launched rockets that will get just a few government employees to LEO, and just maybe beyond...?
Sorry, an everyday, common, mundane spaceflight capability that's in constant operation and that we hardly notice (if Apollo was any example, we will soon get bored anyway...let it be for something so common as to be worthy of our disinterest), is precisely what we need today.
Can't identify? Too bad. Apollo warped our thinking on what manned spaceflight should be. Apollo is over, and people no longer gather in Paris when a non-stop flight comes from the US, either. That they now happen many times daily without fanfare is what's important, and should be the goal for space. We don't want Lindberghs now, we want plenty of operation in space involving people you never heard of.
You want entertainment instead of transportation? Go to a movie.
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha - that is kind of funny...
still waiting on the zombie apokolypse
Is it my imagination, or do the fuselages for this monster look like flattened Spruce Gooses?
good story...just wan'a be a billionaire...so frick'n bad...
Adding VSTOL engines to the design would reduce the need of the runway length by routing fuel to the engines that would give it added lift thrust.
Why don't these super rich people just home and use the money they were going to use to play Buck Rogers to buy 1000's of homeless people a nice home and while they are at it feed them too.
Seriously?!?! What would those 1000s of people do once they get those homes? They need jobs. This is one of those 'private entrepreneurship' things that will create more jobs.
Such a retardocon.
I think you just won the award for the most rediculous comment!! If you are so worried about them why don't you invite them to come live at your house? Without people like this that shell out millions of they're hard earned money to advance our species to a greater future, we would be a heroless nation looking up at the stars wishing we had an affordable way to escape to space from all the hooker Lady Ga Ga's and useless Justin Bieber's and Idiotic Obama's!!
So, how do you know they're not also doing that? Would you expect the same headline?
Besides, that's philanthropy (which is good). This isn't a giveaway, this is intended to make money. (even if for something, better space access, that they feel [as do I] should be done, anyway)
Would you be saying the same, if this were some super-new high-speed rail technology, instead?
Or is your problem only that it's 'space?'
No fedup you have won it,if you want so bad to advance this species {you sound like a bad star trek adventure} why don't you go to a swimming pool with a 500 lb weight on and work on a human that can breathe underwater,don't worry we'll save the data. If you don't enjoy the world as it is with all it's oddities go live in a cave.
Because they don't want to waste their money.
To Bobby mac, & Brian Wilson. The problem with providing homes and feeding the homeless is they just produce more little empty mouths. If you provide jobs, you engender working, taxpaying, homebuying people who benefit society.(let alone all the space related stuff) THAT'S why I support "Billionaires" and their business(es)--S--.
Why do homeless people deserve a free home? You and I don't get free homes. So, what you're saying is that if you want a free home you should quit your job and live on the streets and wait for billionaires to come along building everyone free homes? That is ridiculous.
I think it's great. They will take a bunch of 99% folks up into space,(because they will be only one's who could afford it) Wouldn't it be nice if they were all Banker's and maybe they wouldn't be able to get them back down again? Ahhh wishful thinking I guess.
A million dollar per person roller coaster
40 years from now the middle class will be asked to bail out the space industry and clean up all the toxic debris floating in space while the billionaries run to the Cayman Islands. The two middle class people left at that time anyway.
The problem with your argument is that the "bailouts" came because the government felt that the auto industry and the banks were "too big to fail". America needs to restructure our different markets so that no entity or industry can be too big to fail. America should not be tied down to that potential dead wait.
I'm not suggesting putting a cap on capitalism, but some kind of remedy is needed to prevent corporations from becoming "too big to fail".
What a sad story of sick men who have their heads so high in the clouds that they do not see the suffering of the children and the old people in this nation. They are no different that the Russian Czars who left the peasants to starve while they drank wine and ate caviar and someday they will suffer the same fate. Sure, I know they give a few million to charity to make themselves feel moral. How very sad Hopefully, when Washington is ruled by the young people with computers and vision, this will change
When the nation is ruled by the young people of this generation that have no work ethics, rely on computers to do everything for them, want the government to pay for they're education, mortgage, car, etc. we will all be doomed( the new generation actually had a movie made about them it's called idiocracy )
Paul Allen doesn't run the country.
And what did Russia get after the Czars? How well did the managed system that kept everyone equally poor work out, before they gave it up and became capitalists themselves? (As well as becoming the only country from which you can buy a seat to orbit, at this time.)
Hahahahaha, what a great post, WD... You had me going for a while...
Young people with computers - priceless.
wdwright, You clearly know nothing about Paul Allen. Paul Allen, through his many companies donate HUNDREDS of millions of dollars to charitable organizations that feed the hungry and house the homeless and provide paths to jobs for thousands and thousands of people. Generally speaking most billionaires do more good than you give them credit for.
wdwright, you need to get the facts before you spout off about a segment of the population that you don't know or understand. I live in Washington state and there are people in need in the pacific northwest (and all over the world) that get the help they need from Paul Allen and other billionaires like him.
You should really check this out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Allen#Philanthropy
There are good billionaires and bad billionaires. Paul Allen is definitely not the kind of guy you are describing.
Hail to the Queen
hell yeah...