2 Ships destroyed in less than a week.

Does anybody else feel that some teams have been cutting corners after they realized that there are two XPrize launches scheduled less than trhee months from now?

Perhaps Rubicon. Armadillo simply made a series of stupid mistakes is all. I don't see the value of cutting corners now, since you have to provide 60 days notice of launch. There's no way that they'd be able to beat SS1 and da Vinci unless both suffered major failures, and I don't think that's likely (da Vinci, yes. SS1, no). Best idea is to move onto orbital efforts.

Our testing schedule really doesn't have anything to do with the other teams. We wirj as rapidly as we can, and we test when we think we are ready. Not all tests go as expected.

Anyone that thinks DaVinci is actually going to launch an X-Prize attempt this year needs to have their bullshit filters checked...

John Carmack

If it turns out I'm right and DVP actually hits 328k in October, can I be a betatester for Doom 4? (only half-kidding).

BTW, Sorry about the loss of vehicle, but I am very glad no one on the ground was hurt.

Now that they've announced it they're stuck with the attempt. I just hope that it simply fails, rather than having it catastrophically fail.

John , best of luck with Armadillo.
I really hope nobody gets hurt in the Da Vinci attemp, and it would be nice to see them actually make it into space. With their tiny budget, at least compared to that available to Scaled, they would prove once and for all that space is accesible to everyone.

Nobody is going to force them to get in their rocket and fly it. I'm not sure what you mean by stuck with the attempt.

Simple: They don't make the launch and they are not ever going to get any money to help them, and will probably be sued by that casino for breach of contract.

Yes, if they fail to launch it will hurt their credibility and ability to raise funds, but not as badly as it would if they launched before they were ready and killed their team leader. Next, I doubt they have any such contract with the casino, and if they did, what is the casino going to do? Sue them for money? They may as well sue themselves since they are the teams financial backer.

Since the casino isn't the only backer they could attempt to sue them for whatever other money the team may have. There's also the possibility that they could sue for ownership of the ship and even the name. It really depends on what their lawyers tell them. Lack of money by the person being sued rarely stops a lawsuit. The casino could ask for their future wages to be garnished until the casinos share of the non-won prize money is attained by making a case in court that they could have won if they had launched. The casino would have to be careful of bad publicity in such a suit though and probably wouldn't go through with one for that reason alone.

Personally I wouldn't be at all surprised if they made the attempt. That 10 million has got to be very tempting, especially if they have something that might fly. People are very good at convincing themselves that reality is something different than what everyone else sees. Besides you never know they just might pull it off. It's a ridiculous risk to attempt a manned launch with no flight tests in my opinion but apparently they have a different opinion.

I sure hope STC had a lawyer draft the contract with Golden Palace, so they do not net into such a bind.

I really doubt there will be undue pressure from the casino for a launch. I suspect most of the pressure is coming from within the team itself. From the quotes I've read they really want to fly into space. I don't blame them, but it could cloud their judgement.

I think it would be pretty entertaining if a case were brought to court against them for not making a launch attempt. I suspect it would be pretty easy to convince a jury that the most likely outcome of a lauch would have been a disaster. And if this is not the case, then there won't be any problems, because they will launch, because they want to launch more than anyone else in the world wants them to launch.

I don't think that Da Vinci is being "pressured" to launch because of its contract with Golden Palace. After all, Rutan's team is a year behind the original schedule worked out in the agreement with Paul Allen, as Rutan very readily admits.

I agree with most of you...

Making an official attempt (2 launches in 2 weeks) with a design that changed constantly + a last minute engine-change...

And furthermore: not a single flight test.

I do'nt know but my opinion is that they 're just in for the scoop of giving their newest investor some promotional credits...

Even if their ready for a launch Ithink this flight will be nothing more than a testflight, and I doubt that they will reach the 100km apogee...

Then again it's never been publically stated how many test firings have been done for the Wildfire motor. If their guidance system is cold-gas jets, there isn't a lot of effective realt-time testing they can do prior to getting to space, unless they can fly it by remote. To me, DVP isn't nearly as complicated a vehicle as SpaceshipOne, or Armadillo. Much less to go wrong.