On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 12:32 PM, [email protected] < [email protected]> wrote:
> An interesting aside on this. It took the Mercury program a bit over 9 > months to go from the first sub-orbital flight to the first orbital flight. > > The big private enterprise sub-orbital flight happened almost 5 years ago > (5 years this coming November IIRC). It cost 100 million to develop, and > won a prize of 10 million. I can find nothing in development for private > orbital flight. (By private I mean without government money, not government > contractors). I have no idea when it will happen, but I will bet a case of > beer against one beer that it will be more than 10 years from the first > sub-orbital flight. > > Yes, we have announcement of Virgin planning sub-orbital flights in a > big-time manner, which will probably be close enough to break even to be > worth it in PR. And, the owner is a multi-billionaire who could afford it. > But, I think it very worth noting that we are not talking about a step that > took the government less than a year not being on the privatae horizen > after 5 years. There is something fundamental going on here, IMHO. > > Dan M. > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > mail2web.com – What can On Demand Business Solutions do for you? > http://link.mail2web.com/Business/SharePoint > > > > _______________________________________________ > http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com > > Alan Shepard launched in May 1961. The last lunar mission, Apollo 17 launched in Dec 1972. Eleven years to go from one sub-orbital flight to spending 3 days on the moon. That is an incredible accomplishment, the likes of which we may never see again. I watched Shepard's launch (on TV of course) and Apollo 17's midnight launch (again on TV), and I probably won't live long enough to see the next lunar launch and that pisses me off. john
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