Walking Eagle Award Nominations April 27, 2006
Posted by shubber in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Now open.
Name of Company and/or Individual, along with category of venture (tourism, space solar power, lunar mining, etc) is all that is required.
Winners will be announced after ISDC.
Space Cynic April 27, 2006
Posted by oldspacecadet in Uncategorized.9 comments
TEACHER IN SPACE:
Recently, three alt.space companies (RocketPlane, XCOR, and Armadillo) announced donations of suborbital space rides for teachers. This was hailed by the Kool-Aid crowd as a generous gift, and the donors are the heroes of the day in alt.space. How is it generous?
None of the three companies has yet flown a person into space. None of the companies has ever put aything into suborbital space. In fact, none of the companies has a vehicle capable of taking a person into suborbital space. To their credit, all three companies are working on varied concepts that might ultimately reach suborbital space, but that is not the same as having a capability.
Therefore, the “generous gift” is nothing more than an announcement of an intention off sometime in the indefinite future. In the meantime, the energy wasted on celebrating this announcement as some kind of milestone would be better spent on developing a real capability of attaining suborbital space. Whoever accomplishes that goal would then have something substantial to give and we all would have something to celebrate.
