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So that's longer than from Alan Shepard's flight to Moon landing. And the task - with all peculiarities - still seems simpler. I don't think this points to the

by avmich 6y ago

So that's longer than from Alan Shepard's flight to Moon landing. And the task - with all peculiarities - still seems simpler. I don't think this points to the "ungroundness" of Shotwell. Similar projects were discussed and BOTEd for quite some time. The whole suborbital tourism thing is practically rather similar technology, and we're a couple of decades in the implementation time for that.

cma 6y ago
It is hard to emphasize how much harder that last X% of reliability is to allow something like this for flights of hundreds of civilians. We’re not talking space tourism but a utilitarian service for business travelers and stuff. Hey don’t even have a settled design and have made radical design changes recently. SpaceX commercial crew program began in 2010 and is only just coming to fruition.
- avmich 6y ago
  But principles are long since known, and prototypes are coming more and more often. Delta-Cliper, Space Ship One, New Shepard, unmanned Dragons, first stages of F-9, aerodynamic tests in wind tunnels - all of them contribute, to various degrees, to the technologies needed.