Comments on: House committee to look at suborbital spaceflight and astronaut artifacts next week

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By: Rand Simberg

Rand Simberg — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 15:11:04 +0000

Burt Rutan has turned over most of that because he is working on the Stratolauncher now, or at least what the press reported.

Burt is pretty much retired. His showing up at the StratoLaunch PR event was clearly just for PR. Virgin has been delayed both because of the decision to build a bigger vehicle, and the decision to use a hybrid motor for it, which turned out to not be as easy or safe as they thought it would. XCOR was delayed for lack of funding, but that problem has been solved, and they should be flying next year.

By: Vladislaw

Vladislaw — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 05:18:56 +0000

Burt Rutan has turned over most of that because he is working on the Stratolauncher now, or at least what the press reported.

He said that after the win for the X prize, he thought Branson would have the original system upgraded just a bit and fly just two passangers as experimental rides right away while the next system was being developed. He sounded disappointed when he was talking about it that Branson want a much bigger one first.

By: amightywind

amightywind — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 14:43:06 +0000

These companies ARE freakin active, they are hiring, they are building, they are testing. â€¦ in any kind of definition you want to use .. that is called A C T I V I T Y.

Back in 2004 I watched the daring Mike Melville and his Spaceship One corkscrew into the outer atmosphere and land with great skill. What an amazing performance! We are now into our 9th year after that flight. Everyone is still yakkin’. How pathetic. I guess Burt Rutan must not be fully involved anymore. Progress has been indeed disappointing.

By: DCSCA

DCSCA — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 20:16:20 +0000

@That_NASA_Engineer_at_KSC wrote @ July 27th, 2012 at 8:53 am

In so far as ‘artifacts’ go, what’s the point of paying to store the pieces of Apollo 1 in a Virgina warehouse for 45 years, or fragments of shuttles in silos and hangers… etc.,. Ship all this stuff off to the Smithsonian for display, storage.

“This is a close cousin to the issue of the reselling of Oscar Awards.”

LOL Good luck w/that. Personally saw an Academy Award years ago in a famous street market in London for sale– just $150. Space artifacts will show up in places like that, too. A lot of ‘stuff’ has already made its way into space center area garage sales from retired NASA folks cleaning house as well as hardware elements in Florida junkyards.

By: DCSCA

DCSCA — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 19:15:24 +0000

Really…. about the only thing they need to keep track of are lunar samples. (That’d gone well, eh?!) Who cares about these guys peddling some half-eaten bags of bacon bits, a few pens, pencils, a checklist or two or a few personal mementos. The market is very small and the geeks who buy ‘em are suckers. There are people in this world who actually spent good money to purchase individual bricks from Lucille Ball’s house, too.

By: Vladislaw

Vladislaw — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 18:24:55 +0000

niksus… you are talking total nonsense.

Windy didn’t predicate his comment on completed vehicles making commerical flights.

He stated “any activity”. When you are talking about companies in a new sector or field having no activity you are talking about companies that only have a front office with no one working in it and they have an answering machine and a PO box. They are not investing, they are not building, they are not testing .. they are generally not even producing power point presentations.

These companies ARE freakin active, they are hiring, they are building, they are testing. … in any kind of definition you want to use .. that is called A C T I V I T Y.

Let me get this straight, you own a company, you talk to a potential customer and they hand you a check for 20k and you wouldn’t call that sales activity? Sheesh.

So when spacex sells launches and takes a deposit for a future launch .. that isn’t a sale either?

By: That_NASA_Engineer_at_KSC

That_NASA_Engineer_at_KSC — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 12:53:52 +0000

About those Warehouse 13 artifacts – it seems odd the legislation would only target astronauts, not employees in general, and also just the pre-Apollo Soyuz Test Project (1975) era. While I would guess that later astronauts had some clearer written agreements in place that indirectly address this issue of property, and what’s “proper”, the legislation as written is just begging to leave future issues unaddressed.

This is a close cousin to the issue of the reselling of Oscar Awards. The difference being the Federal government can actually provide an enforcement action that is the seizure of the property from any party, first or third party, etc. (not an option that’s been available to the Academy). (see http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/01/oscars-black-market_cx_lr_0301blackmarketoscars.html )

By: niksus

niksus — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 12:18:50 +0000

Vladislaw wrote @ July 26th, 2012 at 2:13 pm
“Virgin Galatic has not did any drop tests since 2005?”
You said it yourself – they DID tests. But they didn’t fly anything or anyone for $. Sold seats? What crazy people did buy something that’s not delivered even once? Maybe you meant prepayment (20k$ approx).- that’s not sales.
Hiring people, licenses issued, PR blogs/articles, drop test aren’t real flights, give no profit and Vrigin Galactic is not engineering company which do tests, but commercial transportation entity who must fly and earn $. SO they didn’t achieve anything at the moment as commercial company (=profit or sales). Before you give “info” try to find facts.

By: Vladislaw

Vladislaw — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 18:17:42 +0000

“NASA canâ€™t allow astronauts to pawn these items because, well, saints donâ€™t go to pawn shops.”

Better they have to dig in dumpsters behind a McDonald’s and keep those items rather than let true space geeks put them in collections. Yep, keep them gathering dust in an attic.