I caught this past weeks two hour special and there is no doubt of Rutans genius. 20 million spent on a craft like this is peanuts compared to how much they will make back in investors, advertising, and taking private citizens up. I see it as the first step in a quickly growing industry of public sector space flight and they will soon come out with something that can lift a payload. They could even launch small satellites from the belly of the ship in the near future eliminating the need to wait on NASA time schedules and politics. This could be a fairly well paid venture for them. Burt Rutan deserves kudos no matter what anyone says. He was the first to go out and get the investors, do the design, and get this thing done. And when you factor in he only had a 20 man crew, and a small building out in this little airport instead of billions of dollars, government backing, and facilities, it really is incredible. He had the guts, he deserves the glory! Lisa Zeigler By the way, if anyone missed the program "Black Sky" on the Discovery channel earlier this week, it'll be well worth your time to watch the 2-hour rerun scheduled for Sunday at 5pm. The in-cockpit video footage is riveting, and if you don't already understand the genius of Mr. Rutan, "Black Sky" will remove all doubt. Chris _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com