Sure doesn't look heavy.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

I don't know, looks reasonably light- some kind of plastic resin?

I think the company's name is scalar composites or scaled composites, Burt Rutan is it? They're at the leading edge of combining epoxies and high tensile materials like kevlar and carbon fiber. The one girder like component a couple of guys were carefully moving (4:13) showed a honeycomb structure embedded in goo. That's one of the ways they make it so light. Neat stuff.

Funny.
I could not help buth think of them as a bunch of islanders gathered to build a dugout canoe. Manual labor, assembling the pieces... Not what comes to mind first when you think of the task this machine is supposed to achieve.

I guess what drives them is the same though. They want to conquer the unknown.

Great clip, thanks!

^ +

ROFL, they still do this stuff by hand? Where's the mechanized assembly line?

I know!!! I mean this is a multi billion dollar device that's suppose to be carrying some of the riches people in earth up for a view from space. People have prepaid in the hundred's of thousands for a 15 minute trip.

Shouldn't this be built by robots with superior brains or something?

I mean it shouldn't look like it's a bunch of college students in the garage doing this no?

I think if you look at the NARPA Races, those college students look more professional than these guys ????

What's wrong with hand-made? We have yet to make a robot that has the ability of the human hand, with all of it's sensory inputs. It's puzzling, that some things are perceived to be best made by hand and others aren't.

Do you mean DARPA? The Defense research robotic car race? That's neat stuff.

Somehow, the assembly process does not inspire confidence. How are the pieces joined, epoxy?

Crazy man, crazy.

If you are producing a product in series, ie not mass production. It makes no sense to set up a mechanized production line. Some of the most expensive cars are made by hand, and engineers do a pretty damn good job on it.

NASA relies on highly trained engineers in full-body clean-room jumpers and hairnets to put their stuff together.

This thing is being glued together in a big hangar by blokes in old concert t-shirts.

I, for one, think that is awesome.

No human hand has anything like the precision that can be achieved by robotics. Integrated circuit manufacturers have known this for decades.

in recent news they've just been talking about a full scale model,so i would have suspected this is that full-scale model - not the real thing.
(title might need changing)

Composite structures are different from what we usually see in planes, which are "monococque" structures of a frame and stressed skin. These are hand-laid fibers of a tensile strength higher than that of steel, embedded in epoxy, vacuum bagged, then catalytically cured or cured in ovens. Sometimes a single filament of tremendous length is wrapped continuously around the parts, providing even higher strength. It has nothing to do with robots. More like building a boat or musical instrument or weaving or something. I think it's almost always done with careful hands and experienced eyes, and yes, often by guys in old concert t'shirts.

Yeah, a robot can stuff a board with chips, or spot-weld a chassis, or be your cruel master, but robots are dumb. They can't see, feel, intuit, craft. Believe me, the human hand is not something to be underestimated.

Plus, this is the second one. They've already proved that it works. So there. And you all want to give these nice folks jobs away to our cold hearted overlords. For shame.

Robot walks into a bar,
Orders a drink, lays down a bill,
Bartender says 'we don't serve robots',
robot says 'No, but someday you will'.

-D. Berman