Re: Rutan spaceplane

White Knight looks very much like Burt Rutan's Proetus.  Proetus has
been
documented in Jane's All the Worlds Aircraft.  For those who don't want
to
look it up, Proetus was designed to be a very high altitude sail plain
(think U2 flight profile) to carry transceiver equipment for
telecommunications, dish TV's, etc.  It would require much lower initial
investment then a satellite.  Of course all of this could be nothing but
misinformation done intentionally to hide its real purpose from others
in
the areo-space industry; as the first stage of a two stage orbiter. 
Knowing
the bureaucracy in anything at all to do with the space program, I can't
blame him at all.

ias

----- Original Message -----
From: Brian Burger <yh728@victoria.tc.ca>
To: GZG-L <GZG-L@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 12:51 AM
Subject: Rutan spaceplane

> Cool stuff here - Burt Rutan (of Voyager & other interesting aircraft)
has
> rolled out a complete spaceplane system which might win the X-Prize by
the
> end of the year...
>
> http://www.msnbc.com/news/902224.asp?0sl=-44
>
> .. but my first thought at seeing the pics of the two-part vehicle
was,
> "Dog, if Jon produced a model that funny-looking, nobody'd buy it and
we'd
> all have said how 'unrealistic' it looked!"
>
> Real life is stranger than fiction...
>
> Brian.
>
>