Thursday, September 30, 2004
Back from the desert after a successful, if scary flight
I gave up on typing up the experiences and just started recording conversations into my tape recorder, as they happened. I have about 3 hours on tape that I'll be listening to and transcribing as soon as I can. The highlight (or lowlight) of the recordings was that during the landing I ended up talking to and standing next to Sean O' Keefe, the NASA administrator.What concrete thing can I do to keep NASA's camel out of this tent? - I thought. I didn't "accidentally" mash O' Keefe's foot, or elbow him in the stomach - it looked like he had a pair of bodyguards for that eventuality - Ha! I'll distract him with Toutatis...
The roll that SpaceShipOne went into put my heart in my throat, if Mike Melville had kept the engine running he would have ended up spewing fire in all directions.
I was pleased that the only casualty of the event was Elf's vaio, which died before we could upload any photographs. I stood behind another blogger (Coding in paradise) during the training meeting - he has a few photos up already, including a stunning shot of White Knight just passing the sun on the takeoff roll.
We got home after 7 hours of driving, still grinning, and I (for one) collapsed in bed still caked with dust and awoke 11 hours later still in my shorts and X-Prize crew T-shirt -
still grinning. I have hope for man in space, once again. Judging from the 600+ articles on the flight, the announcement of the 50 million dollar American Space prize, and Ansari's plans for New Mexico - plenty of other people do, too.
¶ 8:43 AM
