Rick Searfoss

Richard Alan Searfoss, 1956-2018
“Col. Richard Alan Searfoss of Bear Valley Springs, 62, passed away at home on Saturday, Sept. 29, 2018. Funeral services will be held Friday, Oct. 12, 2018, at 2 p.m., preceded by a viewing at 12:30 p.m., at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 600 Anita Drive, Tehachapi, CA. A full obituary will be in next week’s edition of the Tehachapi News.”
Keith’s note: I got to know Rick after he left NASA. We had lots of phone conversations about commercial space. We were almost exactly the same age so we tended to make similar popular cultural jokes. He was really psyched about the notion of training people to fly on XCOR by strapping them into a fighter jet and putting them trough a “Right Stuff” sort of training program – orange flight suits and all – and that the suborbital fight would be more of the same – just higher and faster. He figured this might weed a few customers out but that the ones who made it through would have had one helluva ride. I tried to convince him to expand the ground school such that more people could get a taste of the ultimate experience. Eventually he’d end our long conversations with something like “well it’s starting to snow up here in Tehachapi – gotta go.” Ad Astra Rick.