From: Doug Jones (djones@xcor.com)
Date: Mon Nov 12 2001 - 19:21:42 MST
hal@finney.org wrote:
>
> http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-000090364nov12.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dliving%2Dmanual
> writes about an aborted test flight of the XCOR Aerospace (Doug Jones'
> company) rocket plane. It's not clear from the article when the events
> happened; it was to be the second test flight but there was a fire which
> fortunately didn't damage the plane, and they say that the flight was
> successful a few days later, although I guess the reporter wasn't present.
> The print edition had a photo but the online version doesn't seem to
> have it.
The aborted flight was Nov 1; there was no damage (except to our
nerves), we fixed the problems and flew again Nov 9 (flight 4, 2nd
up&away flight). The photographer was present but not the reporter.
Our public rollout and flight today was a great success, and we should
be getting more favorable coverage soon from various avaiation
magazines. KABC channel 7 got some excellent footage from the spectator
area, but we had our own cameras right at the runway and on top of the
airport tower- look for these on our website soon.
We've been working incredibly hard and making great progress. It's a
rough job, but somebody's gotta do it.
There's also a nice picture in Time Magazine, although the article has a
shallow emphasis on Jeff (the reporter was not very attentive).
http://www.time.com/time/2001/inventions/go/inrocket.html
It's a bit amusing that the next "invention" in the magazine is the
Groen Bros gyrocopter; they had the booth right next to ours at the
Oshkosh airshow in July. Small world.
For lots more info, see http://www.xcor.com/
-- Doug Jones, Rocket Plumber XCOR Aerospace
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