Lift Off

Mark and Deb with George French III of Rocketplane Global.

It's almost surreal to be back in Manhattan after spending time in the wide open spaces of New Mexico. Deb Martin, Wil Simon and I ventured to Alamogordo, N.M. on October 26 to attend the annual X PRIZE Cup, which this time was wisely paired with the Holloman Air Force Base's Air and Space Expo. The sprawling base served as an excellent backdrop for what is becoming an outstanding festival of space and rocketry.

For those of us at LAUNCH Magazine, this was a special event since we had agreed to a joint news conference there with Rocketplane Global, an Oklahoma City firm that is heavily involved in the new race for suborbital space tourism. Our partnership with Rocketplane had been in the works for months: They had offered us an exclusive advance look at their highly secret, redesigned XP spaceplane plans, provided that we would hold the story until the announcement could be made at X PRIZE. So I signed a non-disclosure agreement, and we set about working on what became the cover story for our November/December issue.