selenite0

Rocketplane Kistler, the remnant of my onetime employer, made the Wall Street Journal today. Not in a good way. Their financing deal has fallen through, which means they won't be able to assemble the rocket and carry through on their NASA contract or promises to Oklahoma (which gave them a bunch of money).

Have to say I'm not very sympathetic to their troubles. The vehicle the company was working on when I left was completely unsupported by the market. The tourism rocketplane they switched to when they moved to Oklahoma didn't thrill me but could work. But then they decided to merge with Kistler Aerospace. That monstrosity is an attempt to take a conventional expendable booster and redesign it to be reusable. It's already burned more money than most of the other rocket start-ups combined, leaving a bunch of parts awaiting assembly into a ridiculously unreliable RLV. So by hooking up with Kistler they doomed whatever chance they had of making a working rocket.

I have no clue what the hell they were thinking.