6 ms·

At peak altitude when the video/audio link failed, the commentator, referring to the lack of comments from Branson: “We’ll be sure to capture his magical words

At peak altitude when the video/audio link failed, the commentator, referring to the lack of comments from Branson: “We’ll be sure to capture his magical words and share them with the world when they are available.” Had a hard time keeping my breakfast down. Geez. Seems they should have purchased time on the Starlink sat network for comms. This was followed by: “Remember the day, remember where you are, remember who you shared this with, and remember the name Virgin Galactic, because today, space is Virgin territory.” If over-hype leads to business success, I guess they are on their way. The professional, highly trained pilot/astronauts were referred to as Dave and Mike. Every mention of Branson was Sir Richard Branson. Amazing tech, but $250K for 6 minutes of weightlessness? Not exactly democratizing space. It might work out eventually, but hard to see the payoff for the massive investment to date.

avmich 5y ago
> It might work out eventually, but hard to see the payoff for the massive investment to date. I guess for many it was hard to see the payoff of "beep, beep" on October 4th, 1957. I likely wouldn't see its importance - by myself, but I've got good explanations. Now I see. Virgin Galactic flight is lower than what Blue Origin promises to do in several days. Both of those systems are examples of pretty good engineering, and both promise even better performance in the future. I think VG's approach is overall better on the grounds of more inherent safety. And the safer the flights are, the easier it's to make them accessible to everybody - thus the path to the democratization. The big investments are done today and last decades - remember SpaceShipOne? - but today we see another milestone reached, and even though it's $250K for 4 minutes (?) of weightlessness, it's way more than unavailability of the past. But we won't stop here, of course.
- SergeAx 5y ago
  The actual message from "beep, beep" on October 4th, 1957 was that: hey, we can now deliver a bomb over the ocean in an hour and it is unstoppable.
SergeAx 5y ago
More likely 3 minutes from what I heard on the stream.

avmich 5y ago

> It might work out eventually, but hard to see the payoff for the massive investment to date. I guess for many it was hard to see the payoff of "beep, beep" on October 4th, 1957. I likely wouldn't see its importance - by myself, but I've got good explanations. Now I see. Virgin Galactic flight is lower than what Blue Origin promises to do in several days. Both of those systems are examples of pretty good engineering, and both promise even better performance in the future. I think VG's approach is overall better on the grounds of more inherent safety. And the safer the flights are, the easier it's to make them accessible to everybody - thus the path to the democratization. The big investments are done today and last decades - remember SpaceShipOne? - but today we see another milestone reached, and even though it's $250K for 4 minutes (?) of weightlessness, it's way more than unavailability of the past. But we won't stop here, of course.

SergeAx 5y ago
The actual message from "beep, beep" on October 4th, 1957 was that: hey, we can now deliver a bomb over the ocean in an hour and it is unstoppable.

SergeAx 5y ago

More likely 3 minutes from what I heard on the stream.