As the author of the article, maybe I can explain why I think it’s a good example. I’ll just say - I absolutely could have chosen something that was more of a s

As the author of the article, maybe I can explain why I think it’s a good example. I’ll just say - I absolutely could have chosen something that was more of a slam dunk great idea (in hindsight) with tons of follow-on success. I mostly chose it because the Rotary Rocket and SpaceShipOne sit next to each other in Mojave and got me thinking about this in the first place. As you said yourself, it was a good design to win the prize. That to me is the key. It did everything it set out to accomplish. Your comments all relate to the scaled up SpaceShipTwo - a completely different vehicle - which I agree that the jury might still be out on. But to me, that’s like saying that a hang glider is a bad idea if someone tries to make a hang glider for ten people. Is it the hang glider that’s the bad idea or the fact that someone’s trying to scale something that maybe doesn’t scale well? That it was the first private crewed spaceflight shouldn’t be underestimated either. I think this list of human spaceflights really puts it in context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_spaceflights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_spaceflights Thanks for reading and for your perspective.