Friday, September 24, 2004

launch on hold

launch on hold

The DaVinci project's suborbital launch has been put on hold for a few weeks, mainly due to the lack of multiaxis filament winder in Canada, a necessary device to build the composite-material passenger compartment. So, unless there is a major mishap, it appears that Scaled Composites now has a clear field for its Ansari X-prize attempts on September 29th and October 4th.

Dang. For a while there it was looking like it could be a real race. I hope Burt Rutan doesn't run into any problems with the attempts by SpaceShipOne; hopefully he pulls it off without a hitch.

Of course, if he does run into problems (barring a major catastrophe), then the race is back on again... and not just with da Vinci, but with Armadillo, Starchaser, and all the other groups (check out the X-prize blog, linked at left under the blogroll).

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