the kind of vehicle we're talking about, the kind of design burt rutan came up with an aircraft carrier with a roktd. scaled up. scaled up by follow-on companies, including rutan's original company in the mojave desert. they are taking apart air carriers, a rocket plane that can take something all the way up into orbit. so, we're looking at a technology here with a reusable carrier vehicle and then a dropable upper stage to go as far and as high as you can get. it's being worked out. it's a promising technology. there are more bumps along the road than people might have hoped. people aren't too surprised when this does happen, including -- and i have to say for the men who put their lives on the line every day doing this kind of thing. when those people and those men and women are the test pilots in space, they don't fool themselves. they realize that the dice -- they try to load the dice in their favor but there's always an option something could go wrong, as sadly it did today. >> james oberg, thank you so much. keep us updated. i want to bring in tom costello with nbc news. what's th

when paul allen, the co-founder of microsoft, teamed up with burt rutan and burt funded the developmentf the very first privately developed and privately run space program, which was a truly miraculous and wonderful thing that we all watched. and one of these pilots was also a pilot in the spaceshipone program. the other pilot at that time was also a test pilot for the company, scales composite, which build both spaceships, intoet spacesh both spaceshipone and spaceshiptwo. and they were -- in fact, they were very, very good friends, the two of them. and they were some of the best flight pilots i've ever seen. for two young gentlemen, they had talents like you would not believe. they were both civilian pilots. in other words, neither one of them had gone through military training to achieve their skills. they sort of were both born into flight. and they loved to fly. flying was the passion. flying was what they lived to do. and absolutely they both understood the risks that they took in this job which is, as a test pilot, the most scary job, i think, anyone could undertake, which is to

the project is a joint venture between sir richard branson and imin aed aerospace engineer burt rutan called scaled composites now owned by publicly traded north tlup grumened. they're frying to the scene and put that out on a tweet earlier today. melissa, back to you. >> thank you, michelle caruso-cabrera. >>> and up for the first time in three days, earlier the company stock dropped on news hewlett-packard is entering the 3d space. yesterday i spoke with a strategist in an exclusive interview at the company's 3d printing event in new york and asked thoughts about the impact of hp. >> i was glad to hear that hp is joining our markets. i think that hp has a very strong brand. i think it will help us to fight one of our main challenges, to create awareness to 3d printing and different manufacturing. nevertheless, as a competitor, hp is a serious company which will announce the technology. i'm not sure how it will be reflected in the products, i just don't know enough at this point of time. neverthele nevertheless, a very strong company and 25 years on the road and experience relevant f