The Free Market... It's Out Of This World!!!

It's interesting how George Bush has insisted on keeping NASA and its 1980s technology afloat. If he were a true Republican, he would have turned to the private sector long ago, to give NASA a healthy dose of market-driven competition.

Well, even without a REAL Republican in office, the space race has been privatized anyway. And tomorrow morning, the rubber hits the road for the private space sector. SpaceShipOne is scheduled to be first privatized, human-driven craft to reach sub-oribital space.

From VOANews.com:

SpaceShipOne will take off from the desert town of Mojave at 6:30. An aircraft will carry the spaceship to a height of 15 kilometers, then the ship's rockets will fire for 80 seconds. It will reach three times the speed of sound, and pierce the outer layer of the earth's atmosphere to briefly enter sub-orbital space.

Click here for the whole story.

Pretty cool. I hope it succeeds. Our space technology could use some innovation and NASA could use some competition.

Does anybody remember Voyager from 1986 (the plane that flew around the world without stopping to re-fuel)? SpaceShipOne was designed by the same guy who designed Voyager.

If you click here and go to the homepage for SpaceShipOne, you will see some pictures of the ship.

Though the pilot hasn't been named yet, rumor has it that it most likely will NOT be a member of N'Sync ( click here if you don't get that reference.