Spaceship Two Receives Experimental Certificate

"Iiiiii just waaant to fly.....higher higher higher....."
(Apologies to Sugar Ray)

"Where never Sparrow, or even Eagle flew ..." - apologies for any inaccurate quote from "High Flight" - I'd love to reach out and touch the Face of God, myself.

Great! Now all I need is $200,000.00 and airfare to the spaceport.

What a week for space!! Save your money and buy stock in VirginGalactic and SpaceEx. We are witnessing the birth of two new industries that will never die off - passenger and cargo businesses in space.

Just let me hit the Mega Million and I'm all over this !

(Duplicate Squawk Submitted)

FAA clears Virgin Galactic spaceship for test flights

* License is good for one year
* Only test pilots can fly, for now
* Virgin Galactic selling suborbital rides for $200,000
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has cleared SpaceShipTwo, a commercial six-passenger spacecraft owned by Virgin Galactic, to begin rocket-powered suborbital test flights, the company said on Wednesday.




http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/30/usa-spaceship-virgin-idUSB47076320120530?feedType=RSS&feedName=rbssHealthcareNews&rpc=43

Looks fantastic, well done

Great, I applaud the ingenuity, creativity and imagination which has gone into this project so far, but....

Isn't it about time Mr. Rutan et al started putting some of that ingenuity and creativity into something more worthwhile than (not so) cheap carnival thrill rides for people with a lot more money than they know what to do with? Even if I had that kind of money I still wouldn't be interested because I grew up a long time ago.

I'm talking about sub-orbital flights here. How about a ship that could actually go somewhere and do something useful, such as say, flights from one end of the continent to the other, or even inter-continental flights in a few minutes - how's that for a wild concept? Ya, ya, I know all about the heating effects and the rest of the technical problems, but it seems to me that would be a far, far better goal to pursue, a challenge worthy of his skills and full attention.