Transterrestrial Musings  


Amazon Honor System Click Here to Pay

Space
Alan Boyle (MSNBC)
Space Politics (Jeff Foust)
Space Transport News (Clark Lindsey)
NASA Watch
NASA Space Flight
Hobby Space
A Voyage To Arcturus (Jay Manifold)
Dispatches From The Final Frontier (Michael Belfiore)
Personal Spaceflight (Jeff Foust)
Mars Blog
The Flame Trench (Florida Today)
Space Cynic
Rocket Forge (Michael Mealing)
COTS Watch (Michael Mealing)
Curmudgeon's Corner (Mark Whittington)
Selenian Boondocks
Tales of the Heliosphere
Out Of The Cradle
Space For Commerce (Brian Dunbar)
True Anomaly
Kevin Parkin
The Speculist (Phil Bowermaster)
Spacecraft (Chris Hall)
Space Pragmatism (Dan Schrimpsher)
Eternal Golden Braid (Fred Kiesche)
Carried Away (Dan Schmelzer)
Laughing Wolf (C. Blake Powers)
Chair Force Engineer (Air Force Procurement)
Spacearium
Saturn Follies
JesusPhreaks (Scott Bell)
Journoblogs
The Ombudsgod
Cut On The Bias (Susanna Cornett)
Joanne Jacobs


Site designed by


Powered by
Movable Type
Biting Commentary about Infinity, and Beyond!

« Coming Attractions | Main | Million-Dollar View »

At The Symposium

The wireless seems to be working all right, though it's a tad slow.

No big news this morning. There was a press conference with Elon Musk, Alex Tai, Clay Mowry (of Arianespace) and Peter Diamandis.

The most notable thing about the conference was the fact that there was someone there from Arianespace. The giggle factor continues to diminish.

In response to the first question, from me, Alex said that they are not in a position to make any announcements as to what happened in Mojave--that is for Scaled and Northrop-Grumman to announce when they have made a determination. He said that how they will respond will be at least partly a function of what caused the accident, but that they are in a reevaluation period with regard to propulsion, so that it's possible, but not definite that there will be changes (this is a paraphrase, not a quote). In response to a related question, he noted that propulsion has never been on the vehicle critical path, so the accident didn't necessarily set them back. It remains to be seen whether or not it will be a factor, and going to a new propulsion system could potentially slip the schedule, which remains internal (off-the-cuff comments from Richard Branson aside).

Perhaps more thoughts later.

[Update a few minutes later]

Clark Lindsey is live blogging, and has some results of the morning sessions here and here.

Posted by Rand Simberg at October 24, 2007 12:02 PM
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.transterrestrial.com/mt-diagnostics.cgi/8393

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference this post from Transterrestrial Musings.
Comments

How would propulsion be "off the critical path"? I suppose it means either they already have working motors or a vendor who can provide them.

Posted by Karl Hallowell at October 24, 2007 02:24 PM

If the planned development for it is shorter than the planned development for the airframe (or something else), then it's not on the critical path (i.e., it can slip some amount without affecting the overall schedule).

Posted by Rand Simberg at October 24, 2007 02:33 PM


Post a comment
Name:


Email Address:


URL:


Comments: