Space Ship One Launch on September 29th.

[LunarOrbit]

NASA (or the American government, for that matter) has never been in the tourism business... so why should anyone expect them to provide low cost rides into space for everyone? NASA is a research agency, not a airline or hotel chain. That is why I find criticism like Rutan's ridiculous.

[rcable1]

I think it will be interesting to see how much red tape and cost will be involved in the safety regulations that will be instituted before the public can go into space.

Will the FAA be involved or will they introduce a new regulatory agency?

[Simkid]

The FAA will have to be involved, the question is whether we get an additional agency to deal with space, or whether the FAA trys to regulate space as well.  The thing that has to be hoped is that whatever happens there won't be too much red tape, I know that in the past the tranport people in Canada have said that they don't like the idea of manned spaceflight, but they did aprove Da Vinci's flight.

[rencomm]

NASA (or the American government, for that matter) has never been in the tourism business... so why should anyone expect them to provide low cost rides into space for everyone? NASA is a research agency, not a airline or hotel chain. That is why I find criticism like Rutan's ridiculous.

EXACTLY!

[rencomm]

The FAA will have to be involved, the question is whether we get an additional agency to deal with space, or whether the FAA trys to regulate space as well.  The thing that has to be hoped is that whatever happens there won't be too much red tape, I know that in the past the tranport people in Canada have said that they don't like the idea of manned spaceflight, but they did aprove Da Vinci's flight.

I saw the FAA Administrator interviewed the day of the 2nd SS1 flight. She made it sound like they were the agency that everything would flow through.

[Satanic Mechanic]

The FAA will probably make a special branch or bureau called "Commercial Space Affairs" or something.  They will assign or create some deputy director to head it.

comic mode on
Knowing Congress, they will stick their collective beaks into this and they will probably charge a "Leaving The Atmosphere Tax".

[Bob B.]

The SpaceShipOne team received their $10-million check yesterday from Ansari.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/11/06/private.spaceship.ap/index.html

[Bob B.]

Did anyone happen to see the 3-hour long special last night on the Discovery channel about SpaceShipOne?  The first two parts (one hour each) were titled Black Sky: The Race for Space and documented to program from the beginning through the first sub-orbital space flight in June.  The last part, titled Black Sky: Winning the X-Prize, documented the last two flights in September/October.  It was pretty good and included a lot of behind-the-scenes footage and interviews.

[Jirnsum]

I saw it a couple of weeks ago on Discovery Europe. Very nice documentary indeed  

[Satanic Mechanic]

I saw the show after the first flight of SS1.  It was pretty good.  Gotta love the small shop atmosphere of Scaled Composites.