While most of the NewSpace world was focused this past weekend on the X Prize Cup in New Mexico, there was a report on the Web business blog TechCrunch claiming that Google had bought SpaceShipOne and was installing it in its Silicon Valley headquarters, the Googleplex. That report, of course, was nonsense, since SS1 had been in the National Air and Space Museum for over a year now. As TechCrunch and eWeek later reported, the real SS1 is alive and well in the NASM, while Google has acquired a replica of SS1, one of several such replicas in existence (another was at the X Prize Cup). If you look closely at a photo of the replica being installed at the Googleplex you can tell it’s not the real thing: the replicas all bear the insignia of X Prize sponsors and Virgin, as SS1 looked when it made the two X Prize flights in September and October 2004; the real thing in the NASM has been “restored” to its appearance in June 2004 when it made its first space flight, lacking the X Prize sponsor and Virgin logos.

For this week’s issue of The Space Review I provide a summary of the just-completed X Prize Cup, with a particular emphasis on Armadillo’s attempt to win the Lunar Lander Challenge. If you’ve been reading this blog then you’re familar with most of the details in this article. However, I do try to put the events of the last few days in perspective:

Both the overall Cup and Armadillo’s efforts in the Lunar Lander Challenge illustrated one thing: the entrepreneurial “NewSpace” industry is in a particularly demanding phase of its development. The public’s expectations–and those of some in the industry–have risen because of past successes, like SpaceShipOne. Yes, most companies are still in the earliest phases of developing vehicles and related technologies, a phase prone to failures as new technologies and approaches are tried and often discarded. It’s a steep part of the learning curve, and even more difficult when it’s on public display.