21.6.04

Now THIS is Flippin' Cool

First private manned spaceflight. Yes, yes, yes. More of this, please.

The private space plane was designed by aviation pioneer Burt Rutan and paid for by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen, who has said he spent more than $20 million on the project.


More than $20 million?!? That seems like a lot less than, say, $1 billion. Or $100 million. Or, say, $30 million. $20 million is still sort of a lot of money (i.e., more money in current value than I will make in my life), but really it's not that much money. People spend more than that on luxury yachts. And houses. Myself, I think designing and making your own freakin' space ship is a pretty good use of $20 million. And if you're Paul Allen, and $20 million is a fraction of a day's interest gained by your ridonkulous fortune, then it's a DAMN good way to use pissing money.

Paul Allen is probably the best new billionaire around. He was the first to figure out, Hey, I can buy a sports team. From there he went and realized, Wow, it'd be cool if there were a super-awesome high-tech Jimi-Hendrix-inspired music museum...oh wait, why don't I just build one. And now, a space ship. No, we're not getting to Raijul 7 anytime soon, but it's a start.


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