We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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A commenter to this blog has dismissed the recent achievements of Bert Rutan’s Spaceship One flight as being a waste of money, money which the commenter believes should not have been ‘wasted’ on such a venture and devoted to causes the said commenter no doubt deems a worthier object. We have been here before with this sort of criticism, of course with the Moon landings, with the rather obvious difference that the Apollo missions relied on taxpayers’ money, and not funds provided voluntarily by businessmen.
More generally, any innovative endeavour, or venture which may yield benefits not immediately graspable, can be dismissed and attacked as wasteful. The trial and errors of capitalism were dismissed by early socialist thinkers as wasteful, in contrast to their dreams of an efficient, centrally planned order. We know better now, of course. It hardly needs to be pointed out that on that logic, the first man who discovered how to make fire and spent hours chipping flints to make arrowheads was ‘wasting time’ in the eyes of his fellow cavedwellers, who no doubt wondered if he should be doing something more important.
And I am sure I speak for my fellow Samizdata contributors in hailing the excellent and sustained coverage by Dale Amon of the latest space flight ventures. It is a positive and exhilarating development and frankly, a tonic at a time of so much depressing news out there. So my message to the Luddites who carp, is simply this – you ain’t seen nothing yet.
I am now back in Redondo Bearch and waiting until it is time to pick up the CD’s from the developer. In the meantime, I thought I’d pass on a few other items about today’s flight.
- Patti Grace Smith of the FAA was on hand to give Pilot Melville an award which recognizes him as the first civilian astronaut.
- There may have been some re-entry damage affecting roll controls. I have heard incomplete and contradictory information. SpaceShipOne did come into the landing a bit hotter than expected. I have heard numbers like +5 mph.
- The candies banging about inside of the cockpit were definitely M&M’s. The brand name has been withheld (other than a slip of the tongue by Melville that was edited out later) since there has so far not been any brand placement payments made. I will leave it to your imagination the bad jokes floating around the XCOR hanger…
- SpaceShipOne was about 26 miles outside of the box it was supposed to be in during the re-entry. Because of this the sonic booms on re-entry were barely audible from the airport. There is scuttlebutt about some control problems. This is to be expected in a test vehicle which is being used for a fast-track learning process in a particular flight regime which has never been explored before.
- The engine burn was a bit shorter than was expected. It was 1:15 min rather than 1:30 which was expected.
- I have heard the Governor was not there. The high DOT official was not the Secretary of the Department, it was Patti Grace Smith, the woman in charge of FAA launch and spaceport licensing and regulation.
With the ship back on the ground and the speechifying in progress, I now have a bit of time to pontificate on the importance of this event.
Some of you understand intuitively. Few outside a small circle of friends fully comprehend the magnitude of the breakthrough. Getting into space is not about technology. It is about money. It is about risk, markets, business plans, insurance, and raising capital. It is about the metacontext. The metacontext which died in the desert sun this morning carried built in assumptions that space is for governments; space is expensive; space is too risky for business.
Now we know differently. Paul Allen funded Rutan’s two craft from concept to suborbital space flight for around $20 million. In the aerospace world this is pocket change. Design studies cost that much, let alone TWO working vehicles.
The media came. The coverage has been beyond my wildest expectations. This is the second element required. Not only has the metacontext been smashed; everyone knows it.
Two more flights are required to collect the X-Prize. Today’s did not carry the extra weight to simulate two passengers, at least not to my knowledge, so this flight does not count for the prize. Scaled Composites has said they will give the media 60 days notice. If true, that is August at the earliest. This makes the Apollo Landing anniversary of July 20th an unlikely date.
SpaceShipOne is not a Commercial tourist spaceship. It is the pre-cursor. The success we have seen today makes it clear to the investment community that the regulatory problems are manageable; the risk is manageable… Most importantly they now know we are not all stark raving bonkers. We really can do this.
The investors will come now. The decades of the Pyramid builders is nearly at an end. Linear growth via government funding will now be replaced by the exponential power of the market.
This is indeed what free men and women can do.
I am unfortuneately not quite enough of a VIP to make it into the Scaled Composites area, or at least I have not yet seen anyone I know who could get me in. I have heard it is quite an affair… I cannot confirm, but rumour has it Arnold Schwarzenegar is there and perhaps the US Secretary of Transportation. Paul Allen will certainly be there. Oh, and an astronaut flew in, in his NASA T38.
I will just play it by ear this afternoon.
As of a minute ago, everyone is back on the ground and over at Scaled Composites. SpaceShipOne rolled out a fair distance but not quite past where I was standing at the XCOR hanger. The White Knight did a low pass before doing a sharp turn to come back and land; then the three chase planes did a formation flight. Among the three was Paul Allen’s Alpha Jet and Rutan’s Beech Starship.
It has been a long wait. We have finally done it. The road to the stars opened today.
Private industry develops on an exponential and we have just gotten to the fun part of the curve.
Now to celebrate!
Unofficial… they hit 100km. They are on approach now.
White Knight with SpaceShipOne slung under it took off on schedule and is circling ever higher with the chase plane. Going back out to wait for the drop, should be another 15 minutes or so…
A lovely quick breakfast of eggs, bacon and fruit in the hanger, cooked by the XCOR management… and now we wait a little bit before the roll out. Rand Simberg and Michael Mealing have been posting from here as well; I’ve seen a couple others who might be blogging stories as well.
And Dr. Pournelle is running about preparing to connect here in the XCOR office, so perhaps there will also be stories on his site.
I am almost surprised to not see Glenn out here since he knows almost all the same people I do and should be kicking himself for not running out on students for two days to join us here.
Meanwhile, I have to get busy on my second coffee!
It is now 0430 and most of the bodies are stirring from their sleeping bags and airbeds. Bacon is crackling in the hanger as Aleta prepares to feed the multitudes while simultaneously giving radio orders to volunteers around the airport,
The air seems calm, but I have not been outside the hanger yet. This is as I expected or at least hoped. I have done some flying myself and remember the glorious morning calm.
We will be headed for the VIP stands after breakfast and I will not be posting from then until our return.
I have just returned from the National Space Society and Space Frontier Society’s’ outdoor disco’s. They have a light show projected on a hanger wall and a corral of RV’s enclosing and sort of protecting the party area from the wind-blown sand. There is a thumping beat of good loud 21st Century music, food, talk and dancing. I’ll supply photos when I get them developed… assuming my camera managed to take something from which image enhancement can recover something useful.
The party looks like it will go on most of the night, but I am sleeping in the XCOR office, so I thought it best to get back here and get a couple hours of sleep. The wakeup call to travel to the viewing area will come all too soon.
Aleta Jackson is one of the people organizing ‘the show’ and deserves kudos for her awesome job on short notice… although I expect sleep would be more appreciated. It does not look like she will be getting any tonight. She is out in the hanger taking care of people as they wander in from the NSS party or wherever, and has to have breakfast organized for the XCOR guest locusts after the flight.
Earlier there was a barbecue outside the XCOR hanger. It was like a high school reunion party; I saw people I had not seen in years. I also met a few people I have known for years over the internet but never met face to face. I also got to watch and be deafened by the XCOR teacart engine. They ran several shows just outside the hanger door.
Everyone who counts in private space is here or else will be in tomorror… er I mean later this morning. Takeoff if 06:30 PST if the bleeding wind drops off. The current conditions are not what I would call conducive to safe landings in a glider. There are hours to go though, and dawn is usually a period of calm so I am hoping for the best. If worst comes to worst, I have planned my return flights with several day’s of leeway. I have been around the rocket scene for far too long to have done otherwise.
I will post again in the morning, probably after the flight.
Rand and I arrived at the Mojave Civilian Test Flight Facility about an hour ago and I have had time to run about and snap some candid photos of the crowd at the XCOR hanger. Dr. Pournelle is here, Elon Musk is around somewhere as are others in the commercial space flight field.
I got Jeff Greason’s attention just after an interview and have my network connection sorted from inside the office. Now I must go and be sociable… and Rand is pushing for me to unload the airbed and other stuff from his car. I will try to post more later.
Yes, there will be photos, but not until after I get my film developed on return to Redondo Beach.
‘The Space Show’ will be supplying a live audio show during the SpaceShipOne flight:
The Space Show is pleased to announce that it will carry live (audio only) the Space Ship One historical launch scheduled for 6:30 AM Pacific Daylight Time (weather permitting) on Monday, June 21, 2004 in Mojave, California. Events unfolding at the Mojave Airport up to and including the launch, plus special interviews and much more, will be reported live to listeners of The Space Show by our special reporter on the scene, well-known space advocate and leader, John Carter McKnight Mr. McKnight is a regularly appearing guest on The Space Show and is also a space analyst and commentator whose work has appeared in Space News, SpaceDaily.com, SpaceRef, Space Times and numerous other industry publications.
Further:
The live broadcast can be heard on the internet at [link]. In addition, an additional streaming site has been provided Space Show listeners by Jeff Birk at Pioneer Radio in the UK. The tentative URL for this additional site is http://usa.rolo.net:8008/listen.pls.
It will be the next best thing to being there.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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