Rutan Says September Launch & Talks Tickets

[Tuckerfan]

Late September launch is being planned.

“We plan on [trying] toward the end of September this year,” said Melvill, adding that he didn’t know who would be the pilot for that attempt.

Rutan talks ticket prices and hints at more to come.

Just like the early days of aviation, Rutan said, there will be barnstorming-like flights as vehicles give passengers a brief sub-obital flight relatively soon. “The crazy $100,000 stuff,” he added.

“But I don’t look at that as space tourism,” Rutan said. A mature industry is one that has a passenger spending on the order of $30,000 to $50,000 dollars, with a second generation vehicle capable of lowering a seat price to around $10,000 or $12,000, he said.

When pressed on when passenger-carrying spaceships will show up on the scene, Rutan remained cagey. “All I ask you to do is stay tuned. I think it’s going to be interesting. I believe there will be a lot of activity.”

WOOT! WOOT!

[Stuffy]

Can someone lend me $95,463. It’s for a really good cause.

[Tuckerfan]

@Stuffy

Can someone lend me $95,463. It’s for a really good cause.

Is that all? ‘Cos I’m like thinkin’ of raising $200,000 so I can join the 100 KM Club! (Knowing my luck, though, I’ll need to raise $200,200 to be able to pull it off. :mad: )

[caligynephobia]

I’m guessing that insurance costs might either A) make tickets a lot more expensive for passengers, or 2) keep Scaled Composites from taking passengers at all. I suspect insuring test flights (to whatever extent they do) and passenger flights are two entirely different balls of wax. However, I hope I’m wrong on this. Dunno if I’d spend $200k for a joyride (I’ll probably have to wait until the $10k tickets are available), but I’m definitely glad to see Rutan pulling this off.

Oh, and 62-Mile High Club sounds better to me than 100-KM High Club. I vote for that.

[Xerxes]

Would customers be able to sign a watertight waiver of insurance (so that their families won’t come after Mr Rutan if they go up in smoke)? I bet a lot of people would still choose to fly, even with such a waiver in place.

[Tuckerfan]

September 29th is the date!

The American Mojave Aerospace Ventures, LLC Team (a partnership between Paul G. Allen and Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites) announced today that it has given its official 60-day notice and has scheduled its first competition flight on September 29th, 2004, at the Mojave Airport Civilian Aerospace Test Center in Mojave, California. To win the $10 million, SpaceShipOne will need to make a second flight within two weeks, by October 13th, 2004.