jim kingdon

The interesting thing about this deal is what struck me as a small
dollar amount. Perhaps Allen regards this as (partly) philanthropic,
or that he is taking the long view, and views this craft and deal as
just one step for Mojave Aerospace Ventures. Although I suppose with
some money from Virgin and some from the X Prize, maybe it is closer
to (roughly) breaking even, just with the existing revenue.

I say this based on

The licensing deal with M.A.V. could be worth up to GBP 14 million
($21.5 million) over the next fifteen years depending on the number of
spaceships built by Virgin.

Well, $21 million over fifteen years is more like $10 million in
current dollars (I didn't crunch the numbers, and it depends on an
interest rate guess anyway). The X Prize is $10 million (which they
haven't won yet, but we'll pencil that in for the sake of argument).
Allen's investment was something like $20 million (at least, that's
the number in places like
http://www.spacedaily.com/2004/04062....oxvx7b5u.html ).

In similar news (and more directly relevant to sci.space.station I
suppose), Bigelow has made public a number of aspects of their space
station plans: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0409/27bigelow/

Very interesting stuff: at least at the moment, these entrepreneurs
seem to have funding *and* a plausible road to accomplishment
(although I suppose the latter will only be visible with hindsight:
we've seen funded entrepreneurs before, notably Kistler and Beal, both
of whom failed because their market dried up).