SpaceShipTwo breaks up in flight. At the upper left, the main fuselage without its tail booms continues to vent nitrous oxide while in an inverted flat spin. The crew cabin is tumbling in the lower right of the photo. (Credit: Brandon Wood/NTSB)

Part 4 in a Series

By Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

As far as C.J. Sturckow could tell, everything was going perfectly. Flying an Extra plane at 14,000 feet above Koehn Lake, he and photographer Mark Greenberg watched SpaceShipTwo drop cleanly from WhiteKnightTwo and light its engine. The rocket ignition was “beautiful,” the plume color looked fine, the ship’s trajectory appeared to be right on the mark. And then–

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Pre-sunrise checks on WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo on the runway at the Mojave Air and Spaceport before powered flight 3. (Credit: Virgin Galactic)

Part 2 in a Series

By Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

The Mojave Air and Spaceport sits on 3,300 acres of California’s High Desert about 100 miles north of Los Angeles. Since it opened in 1935, the facility had seen multiple uses – rural airfield for the mining industry, World War II Marines Corps training base, U.S. Navy air station and general aviation airport.

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Scaled Composites unveiled a memorial plaque to test pilot Mike Alsbury on Friday afternoon in Legacy Park at the Mojave Air and Space Port. Alsbury was killed in the crash of SpaceShipTwo one year ago.

“Ad Astra per aspera” is Latin for “Through hardships to the stars”.

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Sunset from the Mojave Air and Space Port, Oct. 30, 2014. (Credit: Douglas Messier)

Popular Science sent Sarah Scoles to Mojave to check out the place. It’s always hard to parachute into a town and completely understand what it’s about, but she does good job of capturing how the sky high ambitions of the spaceport and its billionaire backers contrast with the dilapidated and sometimes desperate state of the town that adjoins it.

Science Takes Off: What Happens When The Space Industry Collides With A Tiny Town?

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SpaceShipTwo’s propulsion system using the nylon engine. (Credit: Scaled Composites/NTSB)

After SpaceShipTwo crashed last year, Scaled Composites President Kevin Mickey was asked at a press conference whether the vehicle’s new hybrid engine had failed, causing an explosion. Mickey correctly said that it had not; he and others knew it was pilot error. When pressed for details about the engine change, he claimed that the change in hybrid motors from three previous flights was a “minor nuance.”

Ahh…no. This was not accurate. Sitting in the audience that afternoon listening to him, I knew it wasn’t. I really wanted to ask him about it. But, Mojave CEO Stu Witt ended the press conference not too long afterward.  Mickey literally ran out of the Stuart O. Witt Event Center at the Mojave Air and Space Port before I or anyone else could ask him anything further. Did he have a good reason to rush off like that? Maybe. I don’t know.  I never got a chance to ask.

And, in the overall scheme of things, it wasn’t that important. The graphic above, taken from the NTSB’s final accident report, shows why “minor” and “nuance” should not have been used to describe the changes.

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Ansari X Prize 10th anniversary panel discussion on Oct. 4, 2014.

One Year Ago, the Ansari X Prize Turned 10
It Was an Uncomfortable Birthday

By Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

The planes kept coming and coming. One after another, they swooped out of a blue desert sky and touched down on the runway at the Mojave Air and Space Port. By mid-morning there were at least a dozen private jets stretched along the flight line running east from the Voyager restaurant toward the control tower. And even more were on their way.

And to what did Mojave owe this ostentatious display of wealth by the 1 percenters? They had come to the sun-splashed spaceport last Oct. 4 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Ansari X Prize. A decade earlier, Burt Rutan and his Paul Allen-funded team had won $10 million for sending the first privately-built manned vehicle into space twice within a two-week period.

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MOJAVE, Calif. — Mojave Air and Space Port Deputy General Manager Karina Drees has been named to replace outgoing General Manager/CEO Stu Witt, who is retiring on Jan 15. The spaceport’s Board of Directors approved the appointment of Drees in a closed session meeting on Tuesday afternoon. Drees, 39, joined the spaceport as director of business development on July 1, 20o12. She was appointed deputy general manager in August 2013. […]

Fire outside of The Spaceship Company hangar at the Mojave Air and Space Port on June 5, 2014. (Credit: Douglas Messier)

By Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

MOJAVE, Calif. – Luke Colby was horrified.

A fire had erupted outside the old Derringer hangar. Pallets of rubber fuel grain were burning, sending a thick cloud of black smoke into the blue sky over the Mojave Air and Space Port. Firefighters from Kern County Fire Station 14 were doing their best to put out the fire by spraying it down with water.

It seemed like the logical thing to do. And it would have been, if the fire had been located almost anywhere else.

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A fitness center could open inside the Mojave Air and Space Port’s Stuart O. Witt Event Center in November if all goes well, officials said on Tuesday. The spaceport’s Board of Directors approved spending up to $60,000 on improvements required to prepare an unfinished portion of the building to host a fitness center. The improvements will include heating, air conditioning, electrical work, lighting, flooring and ceiling insulation. Mojave CEO and […]

Mojave Air and Space Port CEO Stu Witt (Credit: Bill Deaver)

MOJAVE, Calif. (MASP PR) — The man who built a former Marine Corps Air Station into the nation’s first FAA-certified commercial spaceport is retiring, and the search is on to find a replacement.

Stuart O. Witt, a former Navy Top Gun pilot, test pilot, and businessman, has informed directors of the Mojave Air and Space Port (MASP) that he plans to leave at the beginning of next year at the conclusion of 14 years leading the busy commercial spaceport.

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