NASA formally terminated the COTS contract with RpK today. Thus ends the saga that began with George's acquisition of Kistler's assets early last year. Regardless of the finger pointing going on, I think George made a fatal mistake for Rocketplane by making a run at the COTS program with Kistler's K1 program.
The question is will Rocketplane get back on track to compete with Sir Richard's Virgin Galactic or have they lost too much headway with the time, money and job losses with the COTS fiasco?
Apparently Rocketplane has (again) made major changes to its suborbital vehicle - which is a modified Lear 25. One of the (many) problems with Rocketplane is that they've never built anything that has flown. Sure, they've had lots of interesting press releases, one even about a couple that plans go get married on their suborbital flight. (which is a problem since the number of people required for this is more than Rocketplane can carry...)
Oh well, at least George is having fun.
UPDATE - I forgot to point out that RpK was NOT required to return the $32 million that they had been given program to date from NASA. Hmmm, wonder where that went....
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