dang

dang

Well, the Rubicon launched alright. Then, less than 1000 feet in the air, BOOM. I'm sure the explosion was a sight to behold at that altitude. Afterwards, the parachute on the capsule didn't deploy, and it crashed.

Space Transport Corporation will have to completely rebuild the Rubicon; fortunately the rocket only cost them $20 thousand to build (by way of comparasin, NASA goes through that amount of money every 42 seconds; it is also about 1/1000 of the development costs of SpaceShipOne).

Hopefully these guys can get another one built soon. Not that I think they will win the X-Prize (I'm leaning heavily in favour of SS1 for that, 60-40 over WildFire), but I sure want to see them build a viable business. I'd hate to see them drop out of the suborbital market, after coming so close to operating a viable suborbital spacecraft for such a small amount of money.