Actually the engine was made by Space Dev, which is about a mile from my company. It runs on rubber tires and laughing gas. No kidding. It uses the same kind of rubber used for tires as the fuel and nitrous oxide as the oxidizer. This binary engine is safer since it can't just explode like a regular solid rocket engine. Both chemicals have to be present to burn. I'll bet they have a far better safety record over time than the shuttle, which is an accident waiting to happen.

Updates: I hear the price may go as low as 40K for a flight. If so, me and the wife are going to have a long talk about financial goals, funding retirement, and that vacation to Hawaii. The ship did have a problem with the control system that put it 20 miles off course. That's a biggie that will have to be fixed. There was also one place where there was a structural buckling, which will also have to be resolved. The plane reached Mach 3 upon reentry. WhiteKnight (name of the mothership) is from the two astronauts. Lest we forget the great American pioneers who helped make this possible: Bob White was the first “winged astronaut” going into space on the X-15. Pete Knight held the fastest/highest winged astronaut records until the space shuttle, having achieved the greatest X-15 performance records of mach 6.7 and 280,000 feet altitude. Both of these guys served out their military careers, including tours in Vietnam. These guys were finessing a piloted vehicle into space while the rocket boys were riding spam cans atop an ICBM. But other than a small number of aerospace fans like myself (save the book and movie, The Right Stuff), they are much less known than the rocket boys.

I was fortunate enough to witness the Spaceship One flight in person yesterday. It was really awesome. There is an account of what I say under the post, "Burt is going to do it".

I did get some good pictures and video. I'm going to edit them and may put them on the ftp site. The news had the best pics though. ABC did a very good job covering the event. This flight was to confirm the ship would reach space. To win the X-prize, they need to make 2 trips within 2 weeks with 3 people (or equivalent weight). The X prize is just icing on the cake for these guys. Their actual goal is to make space "tourism" practical. They'll make a profit on this with or without the X-prize. They did have one small problem that put him 20 miles off course. They also had a minor structural problem. But they think they can solve these soon, and then will attempt the X-prize within several weeks.

This is what you get when you cross someone who has nothing innovative and constructive to contribute to society with greed and a willingness to commit grand theft.

Burt did it! I arrived at Mojave Airport Sunday afternoon at 3:00. The temp was about 90 deg, which was comfortable. The wind picked up to about 60 mph+, but it was very laminar. Anyway, didn't get much sleep. By 5:00 am it was really calm. The launch is go. Taxi out was about 6:30 am. They didn't dally. The plane was off and took an hour to climb to about 47,000 ft (9 miles). Launch of Spaceship One was to the west (out of the sun). All you could see from the ground was a single contrail from the mothership (WhiteKnight, named after the two great X-15 pilots, White and Knight). Then there were two contrails, and the little ship took off like a bat out of hell, straight up hauling a$$. She burned for a while, reaching 6G and Mach 3, which is pretty slow for a space plane. She topped out at 62 miles (338,000 ft). Most airliner flights are between 30,000-35,000. 50,000 if considered very high for a first rate biz jet, like the Gulfstream Gv. Radio transmission was cut off to the public after Spaceship One reached Mach 3. This is the critical phase of the flight. This radio blackout lasted about 3 minutes. The reason given was that if something went wrong, they didn't want the public to have to hear it, and they'd be so busy they would not want to deal with the public anyway. The next time I saw the little spaceship, it was coming into the pattern. It was trailed by Paul Allen (a Microsoft founder) in his Alpha Jet (a French 2 seat military trainer... nice) and another chase plane. This happened about 30 minutes after Spaceship One's rocket fired after release from WhiteKnight. The space plane was relatively slow, until he had the runway made, then he dived sharply down towards the runway (this is the way Glider pilots do it. It gives you better control during the critical landing phase. Most planes slow down as they descend on final.) Every landing I saw by everyone, especially SpaceshipOne was absolutely flawless. Mike Melville, the pilot and only person on board for this flight, stood atop the little ships as she was towed past the 100,000+ crowd that came to witness the flight. He looked like the happiest man in the world. The best compliment I can give these guys is that they really did make it look easy. The space shuttle cost 400 million for each launch (not including the development costs), and these guys went from a clean sheet of paper to space for 20 million. The claim to have 100 people signed up to take flights at $93,000 each (I'm not certain about that number, but that's what I heard today. If so, this is Wal Mart prices for a short jaunt into space. I had a blast. It was nice to see how everything went off so professionally and without a single hitch. Thank you Burt Rutan.

Here it is folks, Burt Rutan is going to pull it off. I'll be there to see it if I have to crawl from here to Mojave. http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/062104.htm

CADCAM is right. Use Contour ramp. Slot mill requires the tool be slightly smaller than the slot width.

Sounds like rounding errors. Just a guess, but try bumping up the Number of Decimal Places for NCI to 7. (screen, config, NC Settings).

I have a Nvidia XGL980 also. You will LOVE that card. There are zero hickups with it, it is fast, and you can run two different monitors in two completely different modes and resolutions; no problem. Working on post: One monitor with Mastercam and the PST file open. Second monitor with a sample NC file and the result of the current post in a side-by-side compare. Programming: Mastercam on one monitor, email, web and dnc on the other. Once you get used to two monitors, you realize how much time you waste doing an alt-tab between applications. If nothing else, go buy a cheapie 15" lcd as a second monitor. Trust me, you won't regret it. The problem with laptops is most feed the same screen to both monitors; you can't dedicate different apps to different monitors; at least with the Dell's.

I think we're missing the boat on this one. Let prices stay the way they are for a while, and everyone will want an alternative fuel vehicle. Already Toyota and Honda can't make enough Hybrid cars.

I'm very lucky. Because I own my own business, I located the company after I bought the house: 15 minute commute and I never get on the freeway. I grew up in KY where 30 minutes was considered a very long commute. It is way different out here. A 1.5hour round trip to eat dinner is not considered a big deal. Of course, I think some counties out here are bigger than the many states in the east. Distances are just much longer. You get used to it pretty quickly.

One thing Tivo does is dial up every night and get a complete schedule from your cable company. When I get home at night I have Dennis Miller, Tough Crowd, The Daily Show and Special Report with Brit Hume waiting for me. What more can I say? It can also go out and find programs you like; for example, if you like documentaries, etc.

Yeah, you could build your own refrigerator too, but it would cost a fortune, look like crap, and ruin your food. Give GE $800 and you'll have a nice appliance, and you can spend your time and effort towards more productive tasks.

Andris, I found the same thing: I watch far less TV since now I watch with a purpose. It took me a month or two to truly "get it" when it comes to Tivo. Now, if a program comes on that I like, I switch to it, and hit the Pause button. Then I go do some productive work; take out the garbage, etc to give it time to buffer up. Then I come back sit down, and watch the program; zipping through the commercials. Occassionally I will watch a commercial if it is very interesting, but I skip 95% of them (especially the incessant furniture commercials when I am not in the market for furniture!). You can buy these for about $250 now. There is a service fee (about $10 per month, or $300?? for lifetime service). Get Tivo: it makes TV bearable!

Just wondering who else has Tivo? This is like a VCR but it uses hard drive and computer technology. It allows you to pause live television, replay in slow motion (sports fans), skip commercials, etc. and totally changes the way you use television. This is such a cool technology, that I can't stand television any more without it. p.s. I own NO stock in this company, I just wanted to pass on a cool thing to the other Mastercammer's.

A free 5-axis post? Wow. I know some other systems charge thousands, or tens of thousands, for a custom 5-axis post. The "free" post is CNC's property, and it's thier right to lock out parts of it. Of course, you could always contract with a company to write a truly custom 5-axis post for you. It might cost $5,000, but it would eliminate your issues and would still be a bargain over most other systems.

yes to what James said. Turn off bidirectional support and disable fifo buffers.

At present, you need to provide the serial number of your software at work.

Your dealer can order the Handbooks direct from CNC Software, Inc. Some dealers don't carry the books. In that case, you can call/email us direct. Call Julie at 858-748-9692 or email [email protected]. For now, we need your software serial number or proof you are enrolled in a Mastercam course to fill your order. We will always ask you to contact your local dealer first before we can fill your order directly. We much prefer you go through your local dealer if possible. You can expedite ordering by having a fedex number we can use to ship. I hope this helps.

It's called mpbin and is in the chooks directory... includes help file.

DWG translations in Mastercam are generally very good. DXF is a very limited format that has poor spline and dimension support.

Whoopps! Sorry, thanks for correcting me. Daniel Pearl seemed like a decent guy.

I think our troops are as professional as any in history, but these are young people, and de-humanizing the enemy is as old as war itself. I wonder if Sadam ever brought his troops and generals up on charges because of thier mistreatment of our soldiers? I wonder if soldiers in the Arab countries treat their prisoners with complete dignity? I'm sure being laughed at was not the worst that happens in their POW prisons. Didn't Al Jazerra show the video of Richard Pearle being murdered? They are bought and paid for propaganda by the Hussein and the other crazies in the area. The people who did this are idiots, and they are being delt with firmly and openly. What more can you ask for?

The war on terrorism is not lost by the chidish pranks of a few dummies. I wish other countries (including the Arab states) would advertise their bad behavior as much as we do ours. We mock some POW's and get clobbered as a whole for it. They murder hundreds of thousands and gas their own people, and it's like, "what's the problem?"