I've known this was in the works for a while (well over a year, in fact), but it looks like Pioneer Rocketplane is finally getting into the space tourism business. In Oklahoma.

Hmm... It's nice to see that Pioneer is progressing. I've always thought that their design concept was a good one. It will be interesting to see what they do come up with, and how fast.

It seems as though Pioneer has been standing still for a long time, though, and email with people who used to work there doesn't paint a very positive image. Hopefully, the pessimism I feel will prove misplaced.

A Player? Based on what? whats their funding, staffing, support development cycle for this "player"? Whats their plan to go from concept to development. This looks to me like one of many "if you give us the cash we will build it" plans. Rutan has the only working system that I've seen that has even a remote possibility of working in the near term. There are lots of good "ideas" but the leap from idea to flying working systems is grand canyon in size.

Rutans approach is a basic, no frills, tested approach. He's only developed one odd ball thing that I can see, the "shuttlecock" process at the end of the cycle. The rest is a tested direct approach that worked pretty well in the 1950's. That - and the ability to actually fly a working prototype today, makes him a player. It also draws the line for all the other plans. If you cant do atleast that, or show how and when you are going to do it, youre not a "player" but a "dreamer".

I see alot of other good ideas most of them are no more than pretty HTML pages. Few of them have a plan to get there outside of depending on the 'kindness of strangers'.

Frank, the fact that they haven't shown you their plans or funding doesn't mean they have none.

I agree, and I didnt mean to come off overly snotty. sorry about that.. but look at it this way, Project Orion had funding, great plans, fantastic people, even a level of prototypes, but what chance did it really have? Can it go into th catergory of player? nah, I dont think so. I think many of the X prize players bring discredit to the process by being given far more credit than they deserve. I think the X prize is more important than most folks realise, and I just want to see those who are truly in the running given some level of measurement to separate the 'wheat from the chaff".

My criteria for 'players vs dreamers' would look something like this:

1. Success background of the team as a whole in developing and delivery of successful aerospace projects.

"A" people hire "A" people, "B" people hire "C" people and so on. Get me a tight team of engineeers, designers and project managers, like the guys who built the Nemesis Formula 1 air racer, and the score goes up. Get me a very aged ex-astronaut, who got great ame cache,but hasnt done much lately, the score goes down.

2. Level of simplicity in approach. The more 'insert miracle here' stuff I see, the lower the score. Towing an suborbital craft behind a 747? try again guys, its harder than you think. on top of that, why not test it now before you are ready to go? easy, cause that s hard, and failure now would cut funding. Getting a saberliner and putting a small solid fuel rocket on it? Im sure it looks good on a cocktail napkin at 1:00 am, but really.....

3. To what degree can the whole approach me scaled into being. Does the entire system have to come online on day one?

It really annoyed the hell out of me when the DCX project spent millions of dollars working on the landing problem when it seemed to me that the actual problem that counted, the one that would get further funding was the launching of the SSTO approach. I never understood why it was so important to land tail first.

4. Whats their apporach to development of prototypes and system test prior to the big day.

In Rutans case, you see system deployment redundancy all through the approach. The carrier aircraft also serves as a familiarization craft as both cockpits have the same layout. the carrier can be tested separate from the drop craft.