Jon Goff has a nice picture of XCOR's recent firing of their LOX/Methane engine at night.

To be fair, I linked to it right off of their press release. They haven't let us get that close to their engine. Actually, the closest most of what I had seen before I saw their press release was just big poofs of dust being kicked up when they light that thing off...

Gotta love Mojave.

~Jon

Interesting, but as excited as he is to witness the test, I never saw a lot of people interested in engine tests at Stennis.

There seems to be quite a bit of sunlight on the hills, ground, clouds, and in the sky "at night" in Mojave...

John, who said it was a night test? That run was shortly before sunset, in late December just before the solstice, when days are short. Our photographer, Mike Massee was delighted with the illumination, and he has a lot of other still shots that make the test stand a piece of art.

(Mike's fine art photography website is www dot raindrop dot com, if you're interested.)

Doug-

I know that it wasn't a night test. The only person in the entire chain of reporting (Xcor PR -> Jon Goff -> Rand) that said anything about night was Rand. I was just trying to rib him a little about it.

I did, in the post title. It does look like dusk, but probably the brightness of the flame is a little misleading. My point was that it was a low light condition, and very lovely.

For real example of shock diamonds at night, see the link on my name- another Mike Massee photo.

If we're getting into tooting our own horns, I kind of liked the one posted here on my blog (click the link in my name). :-)

That reminds me of the weapons fire of the earth ship against the Id Monster in the movie "Forbidden Planet."