Re: About Xcor Aerospace

S.J. Van Sickle (sjvan@csd.uwm.edu)
Fri, 1 Oct 1999 09:13:45 -0500 (CDT)

On Thu, 30 Sep 1999, Doug Jones wrote:

> This engine could also be useful for other markets (sorry, that info is
> NDA'd), and we could easily scale it up or down after the initial
> development. I came up with a really slick fabrication technique which
> should reduce the parts count and number of welds significantly, and we
> have several other tricks up our sleeves.

Wow. Hope you guys can do a show and tell at Oshkosh next year. There is growing interest in amatuer rocketplanes, and this sounds like a nice engine, combined with a modern composite airframe, for a lively little single seat TAV.

Reminds me of a story I read in Analog many years ago, about a Shuttle pilot who winds up in a parellel universe where the gubmint never got into rockets and space travel, and it grew up as a hobby/spectator sport. A few hundred dead pilots later, the Boy Scouts had there own space station and Jerry Pournelle was mayor of Luna City.

Steve