SpaceShipTwo design to be released today

Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites will be formally unveiling the design of SpaceShipTwo and its carrier aircraft, White Knight Two, at an event in New York today. Interesting, there hasn’t been much buzz leading up to this event: a preview in the UK newspaper The Telegraph yesterday is one of the few advance stories about the event. Attendance at the New York event appears to be very limited as well. I was unable to secure an invitation to the event despite considerable effort, and one company official said they were “heavily oversubscribed” (which begs the question of why they simply didn’t secure a bigger venue, but, oh well…)

This design is thought to be somewhat different than the artist’s conceptions that Virgin has been showing off for over a year. In a speech in Alabama last August, Burt Rutan said SS2 would have a low wing instead of the high wing on SpaceShipOne, and that WK2 would have four jet engines instead of two. We’ll see later today if that’s accurate, and what other design changes are in store.

1 comment to SpaceShipTwo design to be released today

  • Peter Shearer

    Man I’m SO EXCITED I couldn’t sleep last night! For me this is better than a long awaited movie!

    Jeff, I made a quick 3d model of what I think they might look like and emailed you some pics at your jfoust.com website email address… As I can’t post them myself without a website to host them on.

    Let’s see how close to the mark I get…?

    Note: Not to scale and just an artists impression.

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