SpaceShipTwo rollout: initial impressions

It’s cold. It’s windy. (advance excuse for typos: my hands are still warming up!) Not the best weather to roll out a new spacecraft, but it was still an interesting event. SpaceShipTwo is a beautiful spacecraft, rolling up to the site attached to WhiteKnightTwo.

There were, by Virgin’s count, about 800 people for the rollout, ranging from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and New Mexico Gov. Bill RIchardson to Virgin customers (“future astronauts”), sales agents, and other invited guests. The event took place on a tent erected on the end of a runway at Mojave Airport, one that rattled in the wind at times during the speech. (Did I mention it was cold and windy?) There was about an hour’s worth of speeches, a brief “press conference” (if you can call about four questions that) and then the rollout of the SS2 in the bitter cold.

There were no great surprises at the event, in terms of major announcements or other developments. I asked Burt Rutan about the test schedule for SS2: he would not give any dates for when tests would start (although one rumor floating around the press site today was that the first “captive carry” test flight could be tomorrow, weather permitting.) He did say the test program would be like that Scaled did for SS1, with captive carry tests, then glide tests, eventually leading to powered flights. But he didn’t say how long the test program would last or how many flights it might involve.