I’m sitting in the press tent at the X-Prize Cup, with an ethernet connection. Woohow! Bandwidth, sweet sweet bandwidth…

Typing is a little slow–the temperature is still in the upper fifties or low sixties, but phalanges will wiggle faster and with more reliability as the sun continues to warm the field.

The first rocket launch was scheduled for 7:15. It was a replica of one of Goddard’s rockets. It was a little over an hour late. Ascent was beautiful, in a cloudless windless sky. Unfortunately, as Gregg Maryniak pointed out, sometimes chute happens and sometimes it doesn’t. In this case, after apogee, it nosed over and plummeted straight down into the field exactly like a feather wouldn’t. No failure analysis as of this writing, though there was speculation by the Tripoli rep that the altitude-actuated system didn’t work, perhaps with an altimeter failure due to condensation from sitting on the pad overnight.