It’s hard to believe that it’s been half a decade since the first X-Prize flight. I remember it well because I had moved to Florida only a month before, was still recovering from being hit by two hurricanes within two weeks (Frances and Jeanne), and watching on television, frustrated that I could no longer just get in the car and drive up to Mojave to see it.
Now I’m back in California, and hope I’ll have more opportunities to go up and see the other exciting activities that it spawned. Things haven’t moved along as fast as people hoped, either for Virgin Galactic (due to some poor technical and contracting decisions on their part, in my opinion), or the field in general, but things are starting to pick up. As Arthur Clarke noted, we are often overoptimistic about schedules in the short run, but overpessimistic in the long run. It’s starting to be a longer run from 2004.
I have a photo somewhere of you and about 20 other journalists starting to get your equipment together that morning. EARLY that morning, in the XCOR hangar. I think you are standing by your sleeping bag which was in Doug Jones’s cubicle. Or was that the June flight…? Those three flights kinda all blur together. Fun and exhausting times.
Not that morning. I was in Florida. Your picture is from the first flight to space in June.
Rand,
I was also at the June flight. I was in Houston for the record flights but was interviewed by David Livingston in his show on them. I recall predicting then that SpaceShipOne would be retired after the flights and it would take a while to get a space tourist business going.
It will be interesting to see Spaceshiptwo in flight. I am hoping that when Burt Rutan unveils it on December 17 it will be open to the public.