21 thoughts on “Virgin Galactic, Always Inspiring Confidence”

  1. A better name would be “Perseverance” or “Determination” or even “Reach”. But I’m not paying for any of it, so…

  5. Oh yea of little historical knowledge. In British aviation, “Hope” is a famous name, along with “Faith” and “Charity.” During the siege of Malta, three obsolete RAF Gloster Gladiator biplane fighters constituted the bulk of the island’s air defenses. After the battle was over, they were called Faith, Hope, and Charity. According to Wikipedia, that’s also the names of the defensive fighters stationed in the Falklands.

    Hope is not a word exclusively associated with Obama, although millions of us hope the next 26 months pass quickly and without major incident. I hope the White House doors hit him in the ass on his way out.

    1. I don’t think it’s the association with Dear Leader (though that doesn’t help), so much as it looks like VG is answering the question “What’s keeping this project going?”.

  7. When I first became an engineer my boss had a saying: “Bolts don’t care about what you hope will work. Wishful thinking is not engineering.”

  9. If this is Hope, was the other one Despair? Or is this to let us know that VG isn’t in despair, because they haven’t lost all Hope.

    Brits used to be awesome in naming ships.

  10. So all this proves is that too many people want to hit VG when it’s down, and a pilot is dead. Never been a fan of the hybrid motor, etc., but this glee at making fun of them is really unseemly.

    1. I agree. That’s part of why I thought George Turner’s “Spaceship2.1” idea was inspired thinking. Not only is it a serious suggestion, it conveys several messages: that it is a work in progress, that they’re not giving up, and that the new spaceship will be an improvement over Spaceship 2.

      1. I admit that I refrained from snark immediately, because the loss of life isn’t humorous. But that someone finds George’s suggestion as better, I think is the point.

        I thought the naming of the ISS modules was silly. The first US module was called Node 1 by engineers, the second one Node 2. We never called them Unity and Harmony, and while I might consider Unity somewhat fitting, what’s the deal with Harmony? The names were purely propaganda and nothing more.

        So if you are going to use propaganda, it ought to be good. Otherwise, it will be seen for what it is. Hope is a poor choice, and the propagandist who came up with it should be ridiculed.

    2. Making light of a tragedy in no way diminishes the event. It allows humans, who are an emotional lot, to deal with what happened and to continue on. Non-government spaceflight, for any reason, is too important to let it cease because of a tragic accident. Therefore we make jokes and puns and general disrespectful remarks to deal with our pain so we can fix the problem and continue.

      Remember the awful one after Challenger (what does NASA stand for?). I witnessed the Challenger accident in person and it still affects me to this day, but I still tell the bad joke. It is the way I deal with the experience.

  11. They’re filled with HOPE that there will be a CHANGE for the better in their spaceship design. Maybe NASA can take a break from making Muslims feel good about themselves and offer some useful technical advice.

    1. What useful technical advice could NASA give Virgin? NASA hasn’t done suborbital spaceflight since the early 60’s.

      1. Actually, NASA has done suborbital spaceflight several times in recent years – just not intentionally. (One of their climate probes being the most recent example, I think…)
        🙂

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