There’s a workshop at JPL today and tomorrow (I’m doing a presentation there tomorrow morning), so blogging will probably be light or non-existent.
[Update a few minutes before I leave]
The Humans2Mars conference starts today in DC. There is so much stuff going on in space that it’s hard to cover it all in person, even if I had the travel resources. Follow @jeff_foust and Pat Host (@Pat_DefDaily). It’s also live streaming.
[Update before I’m out the door to Pasadena]
Humans2Mars has issued its first annual report. That’s the first I’d heard that Mike Raftery had left Boeing.
If they don’t know why the explosion occurred, they won’t be able to fly until they figure it out. Also, if I were NASA, I’d still be nervous about the May 26th Soyuz flight.
#ExplorationDelendaEst No, it’s not an engine designed for “human space exploration.” It’s an engine designed for human spaceflight. I had a mini-rant about this at Space Access Saturday. #
It was great to see everyone at Space Access after the hiatus last year. It was also nice to see quite a few enthusiastic young people. More thoughts anon, but I’m beat from the drive, and insufficient sleep.
I’ve arrived at the conference. Looks like a great turnout, and a lot of familiar faces. A lot of seem to be getting older. Will Pomerantz gave an overview of future plans for Virgin Galactic, and took a lot of questions at the end. Still unclear what the future of propulsion is for SS1, though he said he thinks that they’re going back to rubber. Follow Doug Messier (@spacecom) for more details. Many of the questions were his.
Powered by a BE-3 engine, the spacecraft flew to 307,000 feet, the edge of space, and returned smoothly to the ground. The company said it was able to recover the reusable spacecraft./blockquote>
I believe that the BE-3 is the smaller version of the BE-4 that will power the new ULA rocket. So it’s a LOX/LNG vehicle. They didn’t recover the propulsion system, but don’t seem concerned about it. Like SpaceX, now that they’re flying again, they’ll continually improve. A very auspicious event as I get ready to drive to Phoenix this morning for the Space Access conference, which starts this afternoon.
) has a report: