Herb Schaltegger wrote:

The use of "we" by the poster to whom I was responding seemed to
indicate a fuzzy-headed personal and emotional connection to Rutan's
project. Actually, that sort of fuzzy-headed emotional nonsense is
often demonstrated by people who think winning the X-Prize will somehow
magically and mystically make space "affordable" by repealing the laws
of physics and economics.


Not to mention velocity; Rutan's ship is basically a recoverable manned
sounding rocket; not anything that can be put into orbit.
Like his Voyager aircraft that circled the globe unrefueled, the whole
design is optimized to perform one task only.
In fact, the design is inferior in performance to the X-15 of over 40
years ago.

Pat