Investors and would-be space tourists are getting antsy about the prospects of Rocketplane Global, the Oklahoma company that plans to launch suborbital flights in two to three years.
Eliza Strickland has an excellent story at Wired.com about the problems plaguing Rocketplane, which originally hoped to begin flying its business jet-style space plane last year. Some investors and customers are looking at other options.
Strickland believes the company made a mistake by trying to tackle both suborbital tourism while also developing an orbital vehicle under NASA’s COTS program. The space agency ended the $207 million agreement in September after Rocketplane failed to come up with private financing to supplement NASA’s funding.
Rocketplane is also suffering from a lack of billionaire investors, such as Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson and Microsoft’s Paul Allen. Virgin also has suffered years of delay, soaring costs, and a fatal explosion that killed three workers at spaceplane builder Scaled Composites. However, investors are still confident about Branson’s suborbital venture.
Former astronaut John Herrington resigned as Rocketplane’s chief test pilot in December. Earlier in the year, a travel company sued Rocketplane alleging the space firm was focusing on the COTS and had abandoned it space plane.
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