Some thoughts and history from Doug Messier.
I didn’t try to wangle an invite, because I’m currently in Missouri, sort of on vacation (which is why the light blogging as well). But if I’d been in CA, I’d have probably driven up, just to see who else was in attendance.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s the official release from Virgin Galactic.
I followed Jeff Foust on Twitter for coverage, not a whole lot going on. This quote from Mike Moses, VG Senior VP of Operations, kind of stuck out:
Moses: adopting mindset from the shuttle program that every flight will be a test flight, in at least a philosophical sense.
I thought that was (among many other things) one of Shuttle’s problem. I think the quote from Wayne Hale was they flew the Shuttles like they were operational vehicles, but really every flight was a test flight.
Also, Branson is still all about suborbital point-to-point.
> Also, Branson is still all about suborbital point-to-point.
Idle curiosity: Is there any estimate of the maximum horizontal distance SS2 could cover if flying between separated points were the objective? (It isn’t the objective for up-and-down joyrides, of course — but what if it were?)
Not more than a few tens of kilometers.