I believe Richard Branson is/was onto something with Virgin Galactic. He isn't building a rocket to take people to the edge of space and back for fun trips. Richard sees that, if you can build a reusable spacecraft launched into sub orbital space, you can get from point A to point B anywhere in the world in a couple hours.

There are a lot of people with Gulfstreams that would pay double the price to save 10 hours of airtime.

Supersonic flying isn't the future. Bezos, Branson and Musk are the future.

PS - As an aside, in my opinion Boeing can't be Boeing again; all the brightest are being hired by the space companies. Boeing was the innovating company 50 years ago. They are falling into a classic case of Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" and Jim Collins "How the Mighty Fall".

The technologies aren't new. We were doing this kind of developement work back in the 90's.....what is new? $$$$ that Bezos, Branson and Musk bring. None of them are aerospace tech wizards.



I believe Richard Branson is/was onto something with Virgin Galactic. He isn't building a rocket to take people to the edge of space and back for fun trips. Richard sees that, if you can build a reusable spacecraft launched into sub orbital space, you can get from point A to point B anywhere in the world in a couple hours.

There are a lot of people with Gulfstreams that would pay double the price to save 10 hours of airtime.

Supersonic flying isn't the future. Bezos, Branson and Musk are the future.

PS - As an aside, in my opinion Boeing can't be Boeing again; all the brightest are being hired by the space companies. Boeing was the innovating company 50 years ago. They are falling into a classic case of Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" and Jim Collins "How the Mighty Fall".

They’re in flight right now. Supersonic test run in a few minutes

… and there it is! Mach 1.10 at FL350. Continuing to test flutter and handling.

BTW - quotes confused apologies if I'm responding to the wrong person

SpaceX was the first to commercialize reusable rockets. No one ever got a SSTO rocket to actually work. (its very challenging and with recoverable first stages, probably not worth it). It wasn't fundamentally new, but SpaceX did the engineering to make it practical.

The virgin galactic rocket just does a short hop - it doesn't have enough velocity to travel intercontinental distances, which takes a good fraction of orbital velocity. So it doesn't have any application to transportation. (basically if you go 100 miles up, you get a few X 100 miles cross range, unless you also add a lot of transverse velocity - which is the hard part of getting to orbit.

I think the difference between Musk and Branson is that Musk understands enough about the technology to make good decisions, even if he doesn't personally create that technology. Branson doesn't seem to understand it.

High level managers don't need to be engineers, but they need to have enough engineering background to make decisions.

The Delta Clipper was very cool technology for its day, but had no useful application and was entirely paid for by the taxpayer. Just for kicks, Google Musk’s net worth in 2002 ($178 million) when he founded SpaceX and Boeing’s profit ($2.3 billion) that year. One is a multiple of the other. One had the engineers and corporate experience ranging from the Apollo program to Delta Clipper. One bet the farm on disrupting the launch market and one bet on a monopoly of government launch contracts. One is failing in every business area it is involved in and one is developing another world beater. The contrast in shocking.

Agreed. Most people think I am nuts when I say east coast to Europe is too short. Not enough time to get some sleep. Give me a 10 hour or longer flight, preferably without a connection.

The major goal for the Delta Clipper was the base rotation maneuver.....simulating a maneuver done prior to re-entry. A technology demonstrator.... Recall that the DC was a liquid fueled rocket with (4) RL-10 engines. The software command and control of the sloshing fuel was the problem that was demonstrated.....akin to balancing a broom stick. That was no small feat and was successful that today is used and appears to be mundane. Oh, and the DC was a small skunkworks like operation with a small budget.....a few million IIRC. Recall that most expendable rocket missions were of the magnitude of hundreds of millions of dollars for the launch....and much more for mission ops.

Agreed. Most people think I am nuts when I say east coast to Europe is too short. Not enough time to get some sleep. Give me a 10 hour or longer flight, preferably without a connection.