There’s no wireless in the meeting rooms, so I can’t do anything real time. I’m typing this from the patio, eating a ten-dollar pastrami sandwich (didn’t pay for the luncheon where Elon Musk is speaking, and getting a von Braun award).
What was interesting about the morning plenary session was the emphasis. In past meetings, they might have led with the wonderful things that NASA has in store for us. This year, the lead speaker was George Nield, head of the FAA-AST office, followed by Jeff Greason, CEO of XCOR Aerospace, and then Will Whitehorn, head of Virgin Galactic, so clearly, the conference programming committee considered suborbital tourism to be the headliner at this event. NASA’s plans (soon to likely be dramatically altered) will be presented tomorrow morning.
Both the Greason and Whitehorn talks were good. Jeff made his usual points, but he started to show a little gam on orbital, saying that he has started thinking about it, and dropping a couple hints. They have seriously depleted their bin of technology problems in suborbital, and are moving forward with the Lynx, but orbital promises to replenish it, so they’re thinking about how to get someone to pay them to solve the new issues, as they did with suborbital. He is clearly aiming toward a two-stage reusable system, with a flyback first stage, horizontal takeoff and land. This implies a very large first stage, or a very expensive first stage, or some combination, and he didn’t want to show us any pictures, because he wasn’t sure what direction it would go. Also no discussion of whether or not it would be an airbreather or rocket.
He also made some comments about flight test, and not to panic when something goes wrong, which is why it’s called flight test. In the days of blogs and texting, it’s easy to gin up a lot of speculation and doomsday warnings that are unwarranted, compared to the old days when no one paid any attention to what was going on at Edwards until the results were released. This was undoubtedly in reference to the recent kerfuffle over White Knight Two tail dragging. He said a lot more good stuff, but I suspect that others will have posts up. Jeff Foust has probably been twittering.
Will Whitehorn, refreshingly, didn’t bash Lynx (perhaps because he was grateful to Jeff for his flight test comments? Or perhaps he’s just realized that it’s not good marketing). He actually praised parts of Jeff’s speech. He says that there will be a flyover of Spaceport America with WK2 at the dedication this June, and captive carry of SS2 by the end of the year, perhaps with a drop and glide test. Engine integration will occur next year. He also showed video of hybrid engine tests at Capistrano. More later.