I’d have never put a dime into this company.
[Update a while later]
In comments, some people seem to think that this is reflective of a fundamental problem with suborbital tourism. It is not. It was a problem of management and design decisions. There is a market for suborbital tourism, but neither of the only two companies offering it are properly tapping it. It’s tragic that XCOR couldn’t survive. It only needed a small fraction of the money that’s been wasted on Virgin Galactic.
I had been unaware of this. It sounds potentially disastrous for startups in general, but certainly space startups.
Should it affect space tourism?
I don’t think so.
My mind is boggled at how Boeing could spend that much money on a project, and still not having it fly. I wonder if the cost-plus culture infected the program?
Go to the south pole. Michelle Hanlon and I respond to Walt Faulconer’s op-ed from last week advocating for Tranquility Base as the first destination for Artemis.
Some in Congress want to give the FCC the power to regulate anything in space with a radio. Fortunately, there’s pushback:
Trung Phan thinks it’s still the Magic Kingdom.
I wonder what Walt would think of what’s happened to the company today.
I don’t think I appear in this video, but I was in attendance last month.
Neil and Buzz landed on the Moon on this day. It’s now been over half a century since the last man kicked up the regolith there. I’ll be on The Space Show this evening (1900 PDT) to talk about it, and space in general.
[Late-morning update]
Anniversary thoughts from Rick Tumlinson. He worries too much about the “climate crisis,” though. And he’s fooling himself if he really thinks that China is worried about it.
An industry wish list.