Quote:
Originally Posted by danielf
I thought the point was to go beyond cruising altitude for airliners. The idea is to carry it to cruising altitude, release it, and then engage the 'warp drive' to get it to proper altitude. Not to 'be dropped and glide back to earth'. Rather sloppy reporting from the Beeb me thinks.
|
The BBC is accurate. This was the VSS Enterprise's first test flight. She has to prove she can walk before they let her run.
---------- Post added at 10:54 ---------- Previous post was at 10:50 ----------
I was struck, while watching this, of the similarities with the early glide tests performed by another starship Enterprise ... in this case, the first NASA space shuttle, which they hoofed into the skies on the back of a 747 a number of times in the late 70s to perform glide tests.
How sad that, over 30 years later, the USA is on the brink of losing its independent human spaceflight capability altogether. I know the cold war is over, but surely Kennedy would be spinning in his grave at the thought of American astronauts being forced to buy passage in Russian Soyuz capsules.