StuntShipOne: The GeeBee Of Outer Space

"SpaceShipOne has unleashed yet another wave of wishful thinking by the alt.space community. ...."

"Burt Rutan is not the right guy to design profit-making tourist spacecraft. SS1 is a logical extension of Rutan's long history of designing one-off stuntplanes for rich sportsmen who want to set a record, or homebuilders with a garage going to waste. These aircraft are intended to make a few test flights plus one to win the trophy or impress the neighbors, and then be retired to a museum.

They are works of art, not commercial airplanes designed to serve the public and make money for their owners. Rutan doesn't consider mundane issues like maintenance costs or fatigue life, any more than Michelangelo calculated the potential gate receipts at the Sistine Chapel. On some of his aircraft, you have to saw a hole to replace a component that fails! It's no surprise that the only attempt to market a Rutan design for general use (Beech Starship) was a complete failure."

"Also, Rutan's pet structural material is carbon-based composites. This class of materials was designed specifically for transonic aircraft. For hypersonic space vehicles it has the severe drawback of igniting and burning at fairly low temperatures. Rutan's firm Scaled Composites made the outer shell of the DC-X military stunt rocket, which actually set itself on fire during a fast landing from the backwash from the rocket exhaust plumes. An aluminum skin would never have noticed this heat, which is far less than that of a reentry. Any serious rocketship made out of composites will need serious heat protection, probably more than one made out of plain old aluminum.

So if I had to bet my money on someone to build the first real private spaceship, it wouldn't be Burt Rutan.

Of all the players currently in the running, Elon Musk is the only one who seems to have both the right technical concept and a sufficiently deep pocket to perfect that concept without outside investors."

Lot's of other interesting comments. Especially curious to hear Gary, Tom, & Larry's view on Bell's comments.

Regards,
Mark