Captain Bringdown

The achievements of Burt Rutan and his team are certainly heady stuff even for the casual space buff. But there are dangers ahead and not all of them involve crashed aircraft. The Powers That Be will not be made fools of nor will they be topped. If Rutan and/or others continue with successful flights, TPTB will be moved to stop them. This could easily be done. The most likely way would be through regulation or legislation. Perhaps there will be an accident involving property damage, injury or even death (God forbid!). The government (whose job it is, after all, to protect us... a little libertarian sarcasm there), will step in and with the help of many "experts" will say, "You see, space travel is complicated and dangerous. So in order to protect you from yourselves, we will pass this legislation that will require certain safety equipment, procedures, etc., etc." And that will be the end of private space. This is even more likely, it seems to me, as people with the stature of Rutan make more and more public, "in your face" critical remarks pointed at government projects. Not that I would want him to stop, of course.

I write all these things as someone on the outside looking in. Yet someone who has studied a bit of history and has had, at least, a bit of a peek inside the workings of the Halls of Power. Of course, there is a simpler, perhaps more likely scenario: an economic collapse. That would put the kabosh on the whole project for sure.

I remember at Starstruck and AMROC we used to say that our major problems were not technical, we could usually figure out a way to do what we needed to do. Our problems were always economic. Now, Rutan seems to have conquered both technical and economic problems so the only thing left are political problems. THEY could turn out to be the brick wall. I sure hope I am wrong.

Courtney Stadd

Courtney hasn't made it onsite yet, but he emailed me about what he has been doing and asked that I post it. I added it as comment 4 under Steve's "Hello Space Cases" since that's where folks were talking about him and wondering what he's been up to.

Read what Burt Rutan has to say about private space flight. Bevin, Jim and many others have been saying the same for 20 years. Burt has the podium now, maybe someone will listen!

http://www.space.com/news/rutan_interview_041014.html

Hi there!

Hey! This is Paul Szymanski, if that means anything to you. Am I the first poster besides Tucker (hi Tucker)? WHERE IS EVERYBODY? I am living in Eugene, Oregon where I lived from ~1971 to ~1982. I love living here, if you can call it a living. I am unemployed and haven't had much fun since the days at AMROC. But other than that everything is JUST PEACHY. I'll check in again from time to time, I am always curious to hear about how everybody did. Thanks, Tucker, keep 'em flying! - Paul

(PS - That picture of the Dolphin taking off? I took that shot. Perhaps my one claim to fame. ALMOST made the cover of AvWeek.)

Whee!! :-)

Hi Everyone

Rutan's successful rocket flight caused a flurry of thoughts and nostalgia. I ran "Dolphin Rocket" on google. Found some web sites that talk about it. Here's one. (It also contains some misinformation that we need to correct to keep the history books straight! :-)

I've been really out of touch with everyone from the rocket days. So I started trying to gather email addresses and see who I could reach. It was fun ... seems there is a bunch of nostalgia going around!

The google search brought up a biographical page on Jim Bennett also which mentioned the Dolphin and which suggested a link between our engine and Rutan's! Anyone know anything about that? As soon as I find Jim's email address, I'll ask him!

I don't know much about any other subsequent rocket ventures that any of our crowd is involved in. Or if anyone from our group was at all involved with Rutan (or with any of the companies that were competing against him for the prize).

Anyone know anything?

Since I was so out of touch with everyone I even went to Classmates.com and ran Starstruck and Amrock and American Rocket Co. -- nothing showed. They do show an Arc Technologies, but don't know if it is ours and there was no one that had signed up. So ... I decided to toss together a quick page here where we could hold an electronic reunion!

So, if you make it here, please say "hi" and let us know what you've been up to!

Tucker