<story><title>Space firm founded by billionaire Paul Allen closing operations</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration-stratolaunch-exclus/exclusive-space-firm-founded-by-billionaire-paul-allen-closing-operations-sources-idUSKCN1T12FD</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>avmich</author><text>We definitely need more billionaires interested in space. We need to inspire with space the &amp;quot;next&amp;quot; (heavily overlapping) generation, so those who&amp;#x27;d succeed may have a chance to advance the space activities.</text></item><item><author>aresant</author><text>This is on the heels of Stratolaunch deciding not to pursue the design and development of their own launch vehicle in January of this year.(1)&lt;p&gt;Instead they pivoted to customizing their massive airframe to launching Norththrop&amp;#x27;s Pegasus XL rockets.&lt;p&gt;Editorializing I&amp;#x27;d guess that Paul Allen&amp;#x27;s estate pushed the company to figure out if there was a short term commercialization opportunity with Northrop, found there wasn&amp;#x27;t, and is cutting their losses.&lt;p&gt;Tough to be a space faring startup without a billionaire sponsor bankrolling you as a passion project.&lt;p&gt;(1) &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;spacenews.com&amp;#x2F;stratolaunch-abandons-launch-vehicle-program&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;spacenews.com&amp;#x2F;stratolaunch-abandons-launch-vehicle-p...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nashashmi</author><text>Why? That centers power in the hands of the few. And what happens after they die, the project does with them. Imagine if he wasn&amp;#x27;t a billionaire and neither were any of the space expeditioners. They would probably be working together to come up with a more stable set of plans for space development.</text></comment>
<story><title>Space firm founded by billionaire Paul Allen closing operations</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration-stratolaunch-exclus/exclusive-space-firm-founded-by-billionaire-paul-allen-closing-operations-sources-idUSKCN1T12FD</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>avmich</author><text>We definitely need more billionaires interested in space. We need to inspire with space the &amp;quot;next&amp;quot; (heavily overlapping) generation, so those who&amp;#x27;d succeed may have a chance to advance the space activities.</text></item><item><author>aresant</author><text>This is on the heels of Stratolaunch deciding not to pursue the design and development of their own launch vehicle in January of this year.(1)&lt;p&gt;Instead they pivoted to customizing their massive airframe to launching Norththrop&amp;#x27;s Pegasus XL rockets.&lt;p&gt;Editorializing I&amp;#x27;d guess that Paul Allen&amp;#x27;s estate pushed the company to figure out if there was a short term commercialization opportunity with Northrop, found there wasn&amp;#x27;t, and is cutting their losses.&lt;p&gt;Tough to be a space faring startup without a billionaire sponsor bankrolling you as a passion project.&lt;p&gt;(1) &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;spacenews.com&amp;#x2F;stratolaunch-abandons-launch-vehicle-program&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;spacenews.com&amp;#x2F;stratolaunch-abandons-launch-vehicle-p...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>njepa</author><text>Chances are inspiration is overvalued today. Remember when Elon Musk was going to put a plant on Mars with an ICBM? Instead he managed to leverage the fact that the US has a space industry. He has pretty much argued this himself in that he used to think that &amp;quot;if there is a will, there is a way&amp;quot;, but later realized that it was &amp;quot;if there is a way, there is a will&amp;quot;.</text></comment>