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.

The first time anyone (outside of Rocketplane and LAUNCH) saw the issue was at the X PRIZE news conference. (Considering our non-disclosure agreement, we had gone to great lengths to make certain that no issues were delivered to the newsstands or to subscribers before the announcement.) More than 100 reporters in attendance were given copies of LAUNCH during the news conference. And later, we gave out 3,000 copies of the magazine to the public, and at the same time it was on its way to subscribers and bookstores.

This was a very rare deal and one that we don't intend to make often. After all, we greatly value our subscribers and want them to have the issues first. But I hope all of you can understand that a promotion like this one with Rocketplane was very important to the success of our magazine. Nevertheless, we won't make a habit of this, I can assure you.

Scott Carpenter

I hope you'll agree that our latest issue is filled with "good stuff." I was especially thrilled to be able to spend some time with Mercury 7 astronaut Scott Carpenter at his home in Vail, Colorado. (He splits his time between Vail home and another home in West Palm Beach, Florida.) Scott's Aurora 7 flight was the first one that I remember with any detail as a kid. And I think I remember it mainly because of the fact that he was the only astronaut to ever spend time alone in a raft at sea following his flight. I also happen to think that since that time, he has been unfairly criticized by Mercury Flight Director Chris Kraft.

I wanted to spend time with Scott and allow him to "set the record straight." I have immense respect for what he has accomplished as an aviator and as a aquanaut. He's a true American hero. I met with Scott, his wife Patty and Scott's son Nick on a cold, rainy morning in Vail. Their house is a comfortable and rustic with Native American tapestries and an excellent choice of sculpture and art (I was once editor-in-chief of Art & Antiques magazine, and I can assure you that you can tell a lot about people by the art they have in their homes.) These are great people.  You'll be interested to know there was no space memorabilia in view, which was refreshing, actually. Scott Carpenter "has a life" and is not one to dwell on the past. In fact, the copies of two books on the dining room table (that you'll see in images taken by photographer Toni Axelrod) were placed there by me. One is the recent memoir Scott wrote with his daughter Kris Stoever, called "For Spacious Skies" and the other is my first edition of the book Scott co-wrote with his fellow Mercury astronauts, "We Seven."

Enerjet

The current issue also includes the first-ever in-depth look at the history of Enerjet hobby rocket motors and kits. Bob Sanford spent months on this story, and it shows. Enerjet was the precursor to today's high power hobby rocketry, yet no one had ever taken the time to go back and truly trace the history of these unique, first-ever composite hobby motors. Kudos to Bob. And I agree with some comments I've seen online about the quality of the Enerjet rockets that Bob has built. He's an expert modeler, and a nice guy to boot!

Upcoming

Now it's on to the next issue of LAUNCH, and I personally can't wait. Fred Ordway has an excellent look at the restoration of the Saturn V at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL; photographer Ken Brown documents the extremely high power BALLS16 rocketry launch in Nevada; Ted Spitzmiller gives us an excellent look back 50 years ago to America's first satellite, Explorer 1; Mario Perdue shows us how to build Sirius Rocketry's exquisite Saturn V model; and I'll give you a full rundown on the X PRIZE Cup and Armadillo Aerospace's attempt at winning the $2 million Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. And much, much more!