It is indeed amazing. I think with a conventional aircraft company, that'd buy you a few pairs of landing gear and a couple of windows. Rutan is definitely on a roll, and I can't wait to see what he comes up with next. Although I have a lot of doubts about the scalability of the Whiteknight/SS1 combo, if he says he can scale it up to a 6-seater (which he is doing for Branson), and if he says "we're going to orbit, sooner than you think," then I'm not inclined to bet against him.

Still, I think it can be done even more cheaply. John Carmack -- who has earned my respect by building and flying a lot of amazing hardware -- has spent a little over a million dollars and is within spitting distance of duplicating the DC-X's capabilities. He estimates that, by the time he fields an X-Prize Class vehicle, he'll have spent about $1.5 million on R&D, plus about $.5 million per vehicle. Half a million bucks! If he can pull that off, we'll all be living in a very different sort of world. Not that we aren't already!

Cheers,

Nathan.