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**McGuireV10** · June 21st, 2004, 10:39 AM

My mistake... they'll be reaching the required altitude but this isn't an official run at the X-Prize yet. Everyone expects them to notifiy the judges that they're making an official run after this test is completed.

Chuck has it right. Not only is NASA not particularly good at what they do, they pimp the shuttle service to private satellite launchers at an enormous loss (they charge about $80M to launch a satellite which costs them between $200M-$500M to launch, depending on whose accounting you believe), which undercuts Boeing, Lockheed, and the other current players in the private launch business. In other words, they're using taxpayer dollars to kill off a vital US industry.

The shuttle is the worst thing to happen to human efforts to explore space.

June 21st, 2004, 10:39 AM	#3
McGuireV10 Senior Member McGuireV10 is offline Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 3,417 Rep Power: 7	Re: Scaled Composites Spaceship One My mistake... they'll be reaching the required altitude but this isn't an official run at the X-Prize yet. Everyone expects them to notifiy the judges that they're making an official run after this test is completed. Chuck has it right. Not only is NASA not particularly good at what they do, they pimp the shuttle service to private satellite launchers at an enormous loss (they charge about $80M to launch a satellite which costs them between $200M-$500M to launch, depending on whose accounting you believe), which undercuts Boeing, Lockheed, and the other current players in the private launch business. In other words, they're using taxpayer dollars to kill off a vital US industry. The shuttle is the worst thing to happen to human efforts to explore space.