SpaceShipOne blog, part two

In which Piss Clear meets the Final Frontier:

Hi all, The folks at MHV are continuing to get the various sites ready for the influx of people, who seem to already be arriving. Several RVs drove slowly down the flightline.

The White Knight, which was doing a number of touch and goes day before yesterday, was out doing maintenance runs today.

Yesterday's update generated a couple of questions:

1 — Can a person sleep in their car on the airport overnight Sunday night? No. The general parking area won't open till 3am. Only self-contained RVs will be allowed on the airport overnight. There is a large open lot across Hwy 58 from where big-rig trucks usually overnight, and that might be an option. I do understand, however, that a number of people plan on lining up on the shoulder of 58 around midnight. Don't know if they'll get chased away or not. There's a CHP (California Highway Patrol, for you out-of-staters) station adjacent to the airport, so they may be out in force.

2 — Is there any European live broadcasts planned? I've no clue. AFAIK, there are a bunch of satellite trucks scheduled to start arriving on Saturday, no idea who they might be from. I have not heard of anyone planning a live webcast, but you might want to check at space.com to see if they're doing anything…I know some of their folks will be here.

One caution to those planning on being here but aren't used to life in the desert: BRING LOTS OF WATER! Even at 7am, it's getting quite warm now, and you will get dehydrated much faster than you'll realize. There will be vendors selling water, but count on it being pricey. Our rule of thumb out here: if you're not peeing every couple of hours, you're not drinking enough.

Other news: I haven't received confirmation yet, but my understanding was that the FAA was supposed to issue the airport the first ever civilian spaceport license today. There's going to be about a 2 hour gap between the flight and the offical press conference, and they are tentatively planning to do a formal presentation of the license during that time, and it should be within view of the public viewing area.

The public viewing area is set up southeast of the new Taxiway Bravo (map is available at mojaveairport.com ), at the approach end of Rwy 30, so everyone will get an excellent view of the landing.

When Burt came in for lunch at the Voyager Cafe yesterday, he was all grins…looks like he's really having a lot of fun with this. Five days and counting!

Alan