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Although he did complain about the regulatory hurdles they are struggling with, Rutan saved most of his jibes for NASA and the competition. Here is a more complete article, especially on what Mr.Rutan said about the VSE vs. his program(s):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12634377/

He has been very critical of NASA and the VSE on several other occasions prior to this as well:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12636028/from/RL.1/


IMO, Mr.Rutan is clearly sucking and blowing at the same time. I feel that it is hurting the credibility of his project and hurting the credibility of Virgin Galactic. He is saying so many things that are nothing more than throwing stones from the sidelines. In essence he is saying:

“I can do a much, much better job than everyone else out there currently doing it. The others are practically incompetent for doing it in the manner that they are. That said, I actually haven’t done it myself, nor do I plan on doing so for the foreseeable future”.


Here are some quotes from the article on specific subjects:

First, he bashes away at the VSE and Constellation:

“For years, Rutan has taken NASA to task for its lack of innovation, and Thursday's talk was no different”….

“"I believe that (the VSE) program, as taxpayer-funded research, makes absolutely no sense," he said. "And the reason I believe that is that they're forcing the program to be done with technology that we already know works, and are not creating an environment where it is possible to make a breakthrough."

He said the Apollo-based program guarantees "that you are not going to learn anything new here that is useful for you to go on to the other moons."

He wondered whether NASA's new space vision was "really a training program" for young engineers who were not familiar with the achievements of the Apollo era. "You could also describe it possibly as archaeology," he quipped.”


But, then when it comes to his own endeavors:

“However, he and his partners at Virgin Galactic also seemed to backtrack somewhat from their shorter-term ambitions for space tourism flights”….. (later in the article) “In the past, Virgin Galactic has said commercial flights could start in late 2008 or 2009, but during a Thursday afternoon talk, Virgin Galactic's vice president of operations, Alex Tai, told conference attendees that the flight schedule would not be set until his company and Rutan were satisfied that the SpaceShipTwo rocket planes were safe. I'm not going to tell you exactly when they're going to begin operating," he said.”

“Rutan has occasionally said that he had a schedule for moving from suborbital to orbital spaceflight, but on Thursday he downplayed the prospects for commercial orbital travel. "I don't see anything out there right now that I would put my own money into as being the solution for affordable, safe enough flying of the public to orbit," he said.”

(but then he also says….)

“Rutan, 63, also laid out some ambitious personal goals, saying he wanted "to go to the moon in my lifetime" and also "see my grandchildren go to the more interesting moons of Jupiter and Saturn””…. (but then later saying) “Fulfilling his dream of safe, affordable flights to the moon would probably require even bigger breakthroughs, including novel ideas for space propulsion, he said. "If I knew what these breakthroughs were, I wouldn't screw around with suborbital space tourism, period”.”


So, in a nutshell:

1) Scaled Composites have flown 3 spaceflights that have barely qualified as suborbital. The next generation of their vehicle that will fly at somewhat higher suborbital altitudes appears as though it won’t fly until at least 2009, a five year gap since their last spaceflight.

Comment: When NASA delays a spaceflight, it is seemingly because of mismanagement, government beaurocracy, ineptitude, poorly designed/built spacecraft, or big contractor greed. If Scaled/Virgin delays an entire program indefinitely, it is purely for legitimate reasons apparently.

2) Scaled/Virgin is not looking at orbital flight for the foreseeable future, because they can’t foresee a way to do it in the manner in which they would like.

Comment: But damn all the others for trying it in the manner that they think is acceptable themselves.

3) Mr.Rutan has a goal of commercial flights to the moon in the next 20 years, and commercial flights to Saturn in 50-60 years. That said, it is currently taking them 5 years to develop a new vehicle that will gain a performance margin of 30-40 km of altitude, 5 additional crew, and 10 minutes of additional time in space over their old vehicle.

Comment: At that pace, Scaled will have a person on the moon in about 2075 and people to Saturn in about 2150. Sorry Burt, but you or your grandchildren may not be around then.

4) What’s more, he sees no “technological breakthroughs” that will allow
orbital/lunar/planetary spaceflight to be done in the manner that he would like to see it done in.

Comment: but others are apparently fools for trying to accomplish the same goal in a manner that does not require “technical breakthroughs”, due to that manner being likely more doable in a constricted budget environment.

5) NASA is stupid for using techniques for lunar spacefilght that have been used before and are proven.

Comment: With a limited budget, it is generally best to try to achieve a goal without re-inventing the wheel as much as you can. In aerospace, this is a well-known paradigm. Rutan knows this. See point #4

6) Building on proven techniques in an evolutionary way does not work and is a dead end. New, “breakthrough technology” is the way to go.

Comment: If they were around, we could ask that question to all the guys who have streets named after them at Edwards AFB, or had their pictures on the wall at the former Pancho’s Bar that was nearby.

7) It is especially better to use new, untested “breakthrough technology” whenever possible for a lunar program.

Comment:I wonder what Jim Lovell might think of that idea? I wonder how Mr.Rutan might feel if he were in the cabin on terminal descent calling out “program alarm – 1202”?

8) Mr.Rutan implies that the Constellation spacecraft will be using 40 year old concepts and technology.

Comment: We however shouldn’t take notice that Spaceship One and Spaceship Two take their general flight plan concept straight from the X-15 program of 50 years ago, or that the same general flight concept has been bantered around for more than 60 years. Scaled’s “shuttlecock re-entry” and extensive use of composite materials ARE new, inexpensive concepts put to very excellent use, but their application to anything other than suborbital flight is questionable at this time.


In closing. I sincerely hope that Scaled, Virgin, Space-X, PlanetSpace, RocketPlane, and all the others do succeed beyond imagination. It is what is necessary in order to make long-term spaceflight flourish. However, none of these parties should be critical of the others currently engaged in the endeavor of spaceflight until they themselves have figured out a way to do it better, and repeatedly proven that it works. To do any less is petty.

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I live 100km from the site of the former factory. A family cottage in northern Ontario is near one of the test pilot's home town. I know the story all too well.

I get sick to my stomach every time I think about it. I hope the country continues to NEVER forgive Diefenbacher for it - forever. Small minded prarie hick so far out of his depth he couldn't even grasp its signifigance. If he were only alive today to see what irrepariable damage he did to his own nation's economic and technical base.

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So let’s see here. To start with we have the Valkyrie: an aircraft that is the product of late 1950’s technology built and flown in the early 60’s. It is the size of a jumbo jet. It comfortably cruises at a speed of 2,000 mph at an altitude of 13 miles, would likely have a max speed of 2,300mph and a max ceiling of 17 mi. It has a range of 7,500 miles. It weighs 400,000 lbs AND has an additional payload capacity of 50,000 lbs.

No one would ever believe those numbers if there weren’t an actual vehicle attached to them. Not even today. For an aircraft of several generations ago it is astonishing.

All of this 45 years ago. Remember for a moment that World War 2 had only been over for 15 years at this time. 15 years. Yes, the Valkyrie prototypes were problematic, but by God – the fact that such a vehicle even existed and operated is nothing short of one of the greatest aerospace miracles in history. If given the time to mature and go into production, I have no doubt that it would be one of the most famous aircraft in history.

Now, jump to today….

The naysayers say that there is no way that even with 30 years of additional technical development, can the best and brightest of the aerospace world with a huge budget construct a small spaceplane that can leap into space from a vastly upgraded version of a Valkyrie. Nope, can’t be done.

Now, I do greatly respect the knowledge of posters here. With all due respect however, the naysayers on this subject are the same ones that would have said in the 1970’s that it would be impossible to construct an operational combat aircraft with the shape of an inverted bathtub that would be all but radar invisible.

The logic of “I can’t figure out how the world’s most high-tech ultra black programs might invent something revolutionary – therefore it simply can’t be done” is both a little silly and pretty arrogant. I’m sure that no one here can figure out how to make a submarine the size of an office building invisible to detection underwater either – but it is something that exists today nevertheless.

The “Valkyrie on steroids” aircraft has in fact been seen by numerous credible observers in multiple widely separated locations over the past decade. These are not “Area 51 the aliens are in the freezer” crowd either. These are credible observers. It cannot be dismissed by naysayers as mass hallucinations, or mass hysteria, or something of that nature. There is a very high probability that this aircraft does exist. The more relevant question would to me be “WHY would such an aircraft exist?”

There is solid historical precedent for this type of high performance mated aerospacecraft operation in the black intelligence community as well. In the early 1960’s, the SR-71 was launching high speed (Mach 5) unmanned recon drones into “hot zones” in the same manner as this new system is described to do. They stopped doing it when they ran out of the disposable drones and the replenishment cost was considered too much. Blackbird flew solo after that.

When they did shut down the Blackbird a decade ago, did anyone really believe that there would be no replacement?

The details in the AW&ST article are fairly specific and from multiple sources. It is not terribly ambiguous. Lots of specific facts and figures. If this article is not to be believed, is the author making this stuff up? Is he a liar? Let’s be blunt here: many of the details given are said to be from multiple individuals who worked directly in this program. Either the author spoke with such individuals and got this very specific and descriptive information that is true, or the story is a fabrication by the author, or author spoke with these multiple sources and they are all liars.

I would argue that even if this article is not 100% correct – I would bet it has some sort of a solid basis in fact. Maybe the spaceplane is not orbital, maybe it’s suborbital, or skip-glide like the Sanger Bomber. Maybe it’s unmanned instead of manned. However, to outright dismiss it is in my mind displaying cynicism and a lack of an open mind about an area where things thought to be impossible have been made possible before. Mr.Bell is example number one without exception. He is an angry, cynical man IMO.

They don’t call it Dreamland for nothing.

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2015944,00.html

I know that a lot of folks here are from the UK (including our esteemed webmaster). I intend no offence to those folks, but I have just read yet another British criticism on NASA and feel the need to comment. It’s not that people don’t have the right to free speech – the right to speak your mind is all well and good. I guess though that I really have a hard time with a great deal of the British media’s consistent and unending hypercritical assessment of another country’s space program, while there is a general unwillingness of their own nation to step up to the plate and do better. It looks very petty. If the UK even spent half what the USA spends on civil space (even just as a percentage of GNP), there might be a firm moral footing from which to criticise the Americans on how they carry out their space program. But the UK does not, nor will they in the future.

I guess what I have a problem with the most is the attitude. I see it time and time again in the Brit media when it comes to the subject: a sanctimonious attitude, gross ignorance of the subject matter, ignoring the fact that the UK is in no position to criticise others, and hypocracy. I chose the above-noted article as an example, but I have seen many others.

The above-noted article goes so far to call NASA’s priorities of the past “criminal”. I guess that the UK in fact knows more about spaceflight than any other nation on Earth – and is endowed with the divine authority to judge all other nations for deciding on how they carry out their space programs – to the point of passing moral judgements. Funny, the author likely doesn’t even pay taxes or vote in America, yet harshly attacks what is for the most part a domestic American issue. Maybe it would be better for a UK citizen to criticise the UK government for not doing enough in the field of space science, as opposed to criticising the Americans for the same thing.

The article is also filled with several “facts” to support its arguments that are simply flat out wrong, and conveniently omits others that are unsupporting. This is also a common occurrence in the British media. Even the BBC is frequently terrible with even the most basic facts concerning spaceflight. When one criticises something and it becomes obvious that they really don’t know what they are talking about, their credibility is strained beyond the limit. It then seems like they are simply pushing a dogmatic agenda, or putting down others simply to build themselves up.

I find it a bizarre attitude concerning how the other nations with vastly more spaceflight experience, infrastructure, expertise, and commitment consistently get it all wrong. This is ironic considering that the UK’s space budget is somewhere at about tenth place globally (even as a percentage of GNP). NASA will spend more on Cassini than the UK will spend on all spaceflight in 5 years. NASA’s space science budget in any given year will be larger than almost any other space organisation’s ENTIRE space budget for that same year. Colin Pillinger had to literally BEG for donation money to finish the tiny, underengineered Beagle 2 (THAT is a national embarrassment, not Beagle 2’s ultimate demise). But hey, the UK knows what they are doing here. Everyone else, particularly NASA has got it all wrong – especially that murderous Space Shuttle.

Lastly, I find it bitterly ironic that a nation that carried out the largest, most expensive, dangerous, and exploitive agenda of exploration in human history can possibly criticise anyone else for attempting to do the same. The British Empire was the greatest that the world has ever seen. It wasn’t about science then either. It was about getting British people to new worlds with the aim to claim, populate, posses, and economically exploit. The UK got fat, rich, and powerful from global exploration in a previous era. There was no thought to quitting when things went badly then either. No questioning the wisdom or morality of such things. At the time, who called for the ending of the British global exploration program when the Franklin, Scott, Shackleton, or dozens of other expeditions went horribly badly? Now that era has passed, and the UK is no longer the global power it once was. However, it seems ok for the British to criticise other nations for trying to do the same now – and when things go badly for those nations on occasion, it is just fine to accuse them of the worst sort of thinking and behaviour for both the initial failure and then attempting to get over their tragedies and push on.

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Wrong way flow? Were's a good example:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/ap11-KSC-69PC-413HR.jpg

The final ESAS report has just been posted by nasawatch.com a few days ago. This is the official preliminary blueprint, and is very comprehensive as such. In it they discuss such testing. Looks like 3 unmanned tests for the CLV.

Everyone should read this prior to making further comments on the technical validity of "the plan". It does answer many questions.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=19094

Of course having the money to do it all is a different matter - that is a broader question for the US leadership to answer, not NASA.