I think this was one of the best attended sessions. I counted about 110 people.
Jeff Greason started off with a brief overview of XCOR. XCOR has been around since 1999. They are a group of 25 people. They are based in Majave. They do a lot of work for the government and others via contracts, to fund their research and development into reusable space transportation.
Their business plan hasn't really changed in ten years. They want to drive the cost down of getting things into space.
Jeff showed us a video. I think it was this video:
An XCOR flight won't be a Galactic trip. With XCOR the passenger will be in the front. He will be the only passenger.
XCOR has been working on other rockets for another customers. One project was to have ten minute turn around time for a rocket. He showed us them doing it in nine and a half minutes. They have had forty test flights on this rocket.
They had a lucky event. They have a camera on the tail which shows the plume. It worked out that because of the scan frequency on the camera they see patterns. When things are working the lines are straight. When there are problems, the lines are wiggly.
He showed several more videos.
He says the turn around for the Lynx will be more like an hour.
They've struggled with various vehicle designs. He showed several iterations on rocket body design, and then on the tail design.
He says it is clear that to get to orbit we'll need to do it in stages. If going to have frequent turn around times, then want both stages need to come back to the starting point. Wings help in several ways. Can use them to turn both stages. XCOR made several design decisions with the Lynx to help learn how to do the stages with wings.
Jeff talked about the regulatory environment. He thinks it would be good to have a little more regulations. He is worried that when we finally have an accident, if the FAA hasn't had crafted reasonable regulations, then Congress will yell for draconian laws.
Jeff doesn't believe the private space industry will self regulate. In general it is more fun to build cool rockets instead of hashing out the details of standards.
The full agenda
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