Postcards from the Bleeding Edge
Monday, October 04, 2004

  Favorite joke of the night...

As we setup tables and banners until the wee hours of the morning - improvising fasteners and the like to hold everything together -

"We're launching the world's most advanced spaceship in 7 hours... and we're running out of velcro and duct tape!"

 

  A perfect day, a perfect launch, a new altitude record

367,544 feet - eclipsing the record set by the X-15 in 1963.

and people around me keep breaking out into spontaneous grins,
driving go carts around wildly, slapping high fives
every eye is bleary, some are teary

and I've got the start to a new song.



G E
They said "it couldn't be done."

A G
Now take a look at

G G# A

Spaceship One



And elf and claire and B (9) and a new friend (8?) just got offered a flight around the airport by a local pilot - to see those two kids jumping up and down and hugging each other you'd think they'd just won a trip to the moon....

 
Sunday, October 03, 2004

  One launch is not enough!

So, after a long couple days of struggling to get back on a normal sleep schedule, get caught up on work, and deal with the mundane details of "normal" life, Elf, and I, and Evan and some folk from the oldest geekhaus on the internet, the armory, are going back to witness the second launch of SpaceShipOne - they're going for the Xprize this time.

Santa Cruz is going to be well represented!

I've been thinking about airshows, and contests, and lotteries a lot these past few days.

Some airshows take in a hundred thousand people, or more. This show could go on the road...

10,000 people, at $20 a head - could pay for a single raffle ticket into space on Virgin galactic- sure, it's 10,000 to 1 odds - or worse - but those are better odds than any normal person had before last tuesday - hmmm... maybe that's viable. I mean, how many people play the lottery at worse odds for lesser rewards already?

And as for contests to incent private individuals and companies to invest in space development - I've got a lot more to write on that - but it's time to get on the road and get to Mojave.

See you there!



 
David Täht writes about politics, space, copyright, the internet, audio software, operating systems and surfing.


Resume,Songs,
My new blog, NeX-6, My facebook page
Orgs I like
The EFF - keeping free speech in the world
Musical stuff I like
Jeff, Rick, Ardour, Jack
Prior Rants - New song: Log Off Now Sharing your home network better in a time of covi... Designing for the disconnect Email lists going down the memory hole Instituting saner, professional source code manage... Wireless and Wifi in 2015 - not what I dreamed of Saving wifi! Fixing Bufferbloat! Fighting the vend... Virgin Media - Fixing the epidemic of bufferbloat ... 49... and trying to find my navel Wheels down on mars!
Best of the blog:
Uncle Bill's Helicopter - A speech I gave to ITT Tech - Chicken soup for engineers
Beating the Brand - A pathological exploration of how branding makes it hard to think straight
Inside the Internet Mind - trying to map the weather within the global supercomputer that consists of humans and google
Sex In Politics - If politicians spent more time pounding the flesh rather than pressing it, it would be a better world
Getting resources from space - An alternative to blowing money on mars using NEAs.
On the Columbia - Why I care about space
Authors I like:
Doc Searls
Where's Cherie?
UrbanAgora
Jerry Pournelle
The Cubic Dog
Evan Hunt
The Bay Area is talking
Brizzled
Zimnoiac Emanations
Eric Raymond
Unlocking The Air
Bob Mage
BroadBand & Me
SpaceCraft
Selenian Boondocks
My Pencil
Transterrestial Musings
Bear Waller Hollar
Callahans
Pajamas Media BlogRoll Member

If you really want to, you can poke through the below links as well.

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