Michelle Murray of FAA-AST gave a presentation on what the office has been up to for the past year since the last Space Access meeting. In the process, she announced that Blue Origin had a successful test flight yesterday. She's probably not at liberty to say much more than that, but perhaps they will have something at their site about it soon (they don't yet). Then again, perhaps not.

It would be nice if Blue Origin didn't operate like the Chinese space program. If someone got a glimpse of their facilities, would Bezos have to kill them?

Heh, it's not quite as bad as the Chinese program, but maybe not as good as the Russian program ;-)

I did smoke out a little bit more about the test from unofficial sources, who said the test was successful and the craft went higher than it did during November's test. There were even Bezos sightings!

http://www.cosmiclog.com

All the best to Rand and other colleagues down in Phoenix, wish I was there.

Considering all of the idiotic comments I've read on the net about SpaceX being incompetent and doomed to failure because they didn't make orbit, I can't say I really blame Blue Origin for being so secretive anymore.

SpaceX is buying something with their openness that adds value to their ultimate success: Community support.