http://www.newspacejournal.com/2014/06/13/report-claims-google-considering-investing-in-virgin-galactic/ Tracking the entrepreneurial space industry Fri, 12 Sep 2014 14:33:32 +0800 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.38 http://www.newspacejournal.com/2014/06/13/report-claims-google-considering-investing-in-virgin-galactic/comment-page-1/#comment-1332647 Mon, 16 Jun 2014 22:32:48 +0000 http://www.newspacejournal.com/?p=2466#comment-1332647 Not sure I agree. White Knight 2 certainly flies. And VG’s LauncherOne seems to be coming along fairly smartly, or at least much more so than the perennially snakebitten SpaceShip2. The Newton engines do not seem to be the long-running technological soap opera that SS2’s hybrid has turned into. While celebrity space tourism is still a Real Soon Now proposition, small satellite launch may well provide VG with a decent, and stable, revenue stream fairly soon that is not critically dependent upon glitz, flash and the whims of the nouveau riche. It would be ironic if VG’s “caviar dreams” business line was to be rescued by revenues from its “meat and potatoes” smallsat business. I suspect Google’s investment, if forthcoming, will be aimed squarely at getting LauncherOne into service as quickly as possible.

]]> http://www.newspacejournal.com/2014/06/13/report-claims-google-considering-investing-in-virgin-galactic/comment-page-1/#comment-1332607 Fri, 13 Jun 2014 20:31:50 +0000 http://www.newspacejournal.com/?p=2466#comment-1332607 What a terrible choice. There’s several companies who actually know how to make rocket engines that would be able to put that money to better use. If Google doesn’t know what they’re doing in rocket development (and they probably don’t – not their domain), you’d think they would rely on useful signals like “company has hardware that flies”.

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