NewSpace Journal » Scaled Composites

WhiteKnightTwo landing gear collapses

Jeff Foust — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:27:27 +0000

WhiteKnightTwo in flight over Las Cruces airport in June 2009. The landing gear is partially extended during this overflight.

The AP reported late today that part of the landing gear for Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo aircraft collapsed upon landing at the end of a test flight today at Mojave Air and Space Port in California. An FAA spokesman told the AP that the left main landing gear, the one that collapsed, was damaged, but he did not know if there was any other damage to the aircraft. SpaceShipTwo was not attached to the aircraft during Thursday’s flight.

Scaled Composites issued a brief statement about the incident, offering few details about what happened in the “minor” incident:

A minor incident occurred on the runway at Mojave airport this morning, which involved a mechanical problem with the left hand-side landing gear of WhiteKnightTwo. No injuries were sustained and the incident did not involve the Spaceship which was not attached to WhiteKnightTwo. WhiteKnightTwo was on its 37th test flight, and has been flying since December 2008. Further information will be posted in due course.

A brief Virgin (and TSC) update

Jeff Foust — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 13:50:37 +0000

Enrico Palermo of Virgin Galactic discusses the company's development of SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo at the NewSpace 2010 conference on Saturday.

At the end of Saturday’s sessions at the NewSpace 2010 conference in Silicon Valley, Enrico Palermo, project engineering manager for Virgin Galactic, gave a brief update on the company’s activities. There weren’t any new announcements about the company’s efforts, nor (consistent with their past practices) predictions about future flights. Palermo did show video of their most recent captive carry flight, the first time a crew flew in SpaceShipTwo, as well as some new photos of work on SpaceShipTwo in Scaled’s facilities, showing the spaceplane’s wings rotated up in the feathering position that provides for the “carefree” reentry of the vehicle, in much the same way as SpaceShipOne.

Palermo did provide a few updated statistics about the company and the vehicle testing program. WhiteKnightTwo now has over 100 hours of flight time on 33 flights since the test flight program began in late 2008. SpaceShipTwo, meanwhile, has now flown three captive cary flights. On the business side, the company now has over 350 customers who have paid deposits ranging from $20,000 to the full $200,000, with a total of now over $50 million. Those deposits, he added, are held in escrow for now, and won’t be converted to company revenue until the tickets are formally issued.

Palermo also briefly discussed The Spaceship Company (TSC), the joint venture between Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites that will manufacture the WK2 aircraft and SS2 spaceplanes. “This is a company you’re going to be hearing a lot more about over the next year or so,” he said. “We’re currently assembling a team of individuals to run TSC in Mojave; we’re recruiting like mad.” (There is a list of job openings on the TSC web site.) TSC is currently located in an existing building at Mojave Air and Space Port, but Palermo said there are plans to build a new final assembly hangar there.

SpaceShipTwo captive carry flight video

Jeff Foust — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:58:25 +0000

Virgin Galactic has posted a video of yesterday’s first captive carry flight of SpaceShipTwo, including a brief interview at the end with test pilot Mark Stuckey, who says that “I don’t think we could have planned, realistically planned, for any better success” on the flight.

SpaceShipTwo flies, on schedule

Jeff Foust — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:34:26 +0000

WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo take off Monday morning from Mojave (credit: Mark Greenberg)

Yesterday morning WhiteKnightTwo took off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California with a special payload attached to it: SpaceShipTwo, making its first, albeit captive carry, flight. The flight lasted two hours and 54 minutes and achieved an altitude of about 13,700 meters (45,000 feet). The flight went well, according to all accounts, and Burt Rutan said in a Virgin statement, “The captive carry flight signifies the start of what we believe will be extremely exciting and successful spaceship flight test program.”

The flight also took place roughly on schedule. As Virgin Galactic’s Stephen Attenborough said last month at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in Boulder, Colorado, the first captive carry test would take place by the end of the first quarter of this year (which it achieved with a little over a week to spare). Captive carry tests would continue through the second quarter with the first glide test some time in the third quarter; the first powered test flight would, he hoped, take place by the end of the year.

WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo in flight (credit: Mark Greenberg)

One minor thing I noted. As you can see in the picture above, SpaceShipTwo flew without an engine, or, apparently, an engine nozzle: just a black plug of some kind where the engine would go. See the closeup below:

Compare that to an image I took of the vehicle during the rollout ceremony last December, when there was at least a replica engine nozzle in place:

Burt Rutan’s BigThink

Jeff Foust — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:26:47 +0000

The web site Big Think has posted an extended interview with Burt Rutan, who talks about space tourism, innovation in NASA and the private sector, and other topics. I haven’t watched the full one-hour interview in its entirety yet, but in the portions I’ve watched he covers some familiar ground about the utility of space tourism and the innovation—or lack thereof—he sees at NASA today compared to the space agency of the 1960s:

If you hear him say anything interesting post it in the comments.

WK2 photo gallery

Jeff Foust — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:01:17 +0000

Here’s a set of photos from Saturday’s WhiteKnightTwo overflight of Las Cruces that I took at the local airport. Enjoy!

WK2 flyover a success

Jeff Foust — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 21:35:31 +0000

As promised, WhiteKnightTwo did make an appearance in the skies over Las Cruces on Saturday morning. The aircraft took off from Phoenix and, at around 9:30 am MDT (11:30 am EDT) made a series of three low passes over the airport. WK2 made a pair of passes over the 8/26 runway and then, after taking about 10 minutes to fly over the city itself, returned to make a nearly touch-and-go approach on runway 30, coming within a few feet of the runway before ascending, circling the airport once more at altitude, and departing.

The flybys were witnessed by a small crowd at the airport (on the order of a few dozen people), including a handful of media (myself included) who were able to get runway-side seats for the flybys. Everyone, even the Virgin staff at the airport, seemed impressed to the point of awestruck about the plane’s appearance. After the flybys WK2 then flew back to Mojave without incident.

The picture above is a tiny sample of much larger number of photos I took this morning; I hope to post more later this weekend after I return home.

WK2 looks ready to go to New Mexico

Jeff Foust — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:51:25 +0000

Flightglobal.com reports that WhiteKnightTwo has completed two more test flights in recent days, which appear to clear the way for the aircraft to make its first long-distance flight on Friday to fly over the groundbreaking ceremonies for Spaceport America in New Mexico. A one-hour test flight on June 11th (as noted in the flight logs) was monitored by the FAA, giving pilot Pete Siebold a type rating on the aircraft. A ninth test flight on Monday, not yet in the logs, apparently was planned to be the highest yet, approaching altitudes of 50,000 feet (15,000 meters). [Update: according to the flight logs, this was a 7.5-hour flight that reached 52,400 feet (16,000 m).]

Assuming all went well with that flight, WK2 would seem to be ready for Friday’s groundbreaking ceremonies at Spaceport America in southern New Mexico. (A WK2 flyover is included in the schedule “contingent upon weather and aircraft test flight schedule conditions”.) Right now weather shouldn’t be an issue, with a forecast of mostly sunny skies and highs of 90-95°F.

WK2 expands the envelope

Jeff Foust — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:10:00 +0000

WhiteKnightTwo’s test program continued this week with a seventh test flight, Scaled Composites revealed in the test logs for the program. The flight set new records for altitude (45,000 feet/13,700 meters), speed (340 knots/630 km/h) and duration (6.1 hours). Plans still call for the aircraft to make a flyby at the Spaceport America groundbreaking next Friday in New Mexico.

Another WK2 flight

Jeff Foust — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:05:08 +0000

WhiteKnightTwo (aka “VMS Eve”) has made its sixth test flight, according to a tweet from Virgin Galactic. The flight was a success and reached a peak altitude of 10,670 meters (35,000 feet), according to the statement, which would make it the highest test flight to date. As of midday Thursday the flight hadn’t yet appeared in the WK2 flight logs Scaled has been publishing about the test program.

At the International Space Development Conference in Orlando last week Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn said that they would do some high altitude test flights in advance of their first planned long distance flight on June 19 for the Spaceport America groundbreaking, so it looks like this flight is part of that effort.