If you got Issue 12 of Virgin Galactic’s email newsletter earlier this week, you might have seen this tidbit subtly included in the text: “Excitement was running high for the high speed taxi runs in December and a succession of rocket motor fires”. (The online version of the newsletter has a slightly different wording: “but […]
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Saturday is, of course, the 51st anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, the canonical beginning of the Space Age. It’s also the fourth anniversary of the winning of the $10-million Ansari X Prize by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, the Paul Allen-funded effort by Scaled Composites that resulted in SpaceShipOne and White Knight. This has been a […] On Friday Scaled Composites issued an accident investigation update about last July’s propulsion system test accident that killed three company employees and injured three others. The statement does not indicate a cause of the accident, and notes that a Cal OSHA investigation that wrapped up in January did not determine a cause. The statement does […] As I mentioned in an earlier post, the status of SpaceShipTwo (SS2) did not come up in any of the public presentations during Monday’s event in Mojave. I was able to eventually track down Burt Rutan and ask him what the status of the program was, particularly after he said to another interviewer that the […] I’ve posted to Flickr an initial set of images from the White Knight 2 rollout for your enjoyment. There’s a lot more from where those came from that I’ll be posting later, but these give you at least a little glimpse of what the event was like. […] I was in Mojave earlier today for the White Knight 2 rollout event at Scaled Composites (I just got back a little while ago and am uploading images taken during the event right now.) Initial takes: White Knight 2 is a striking aircraft. It looks just as good – if not better – in person […] In an announcement whose timing was a bit surprising but also not entirely unexpected, Scaled Composites revealed that Burt Rutan would be stepping down as president and would be replaced by Doug Shane, who had been vice president of Scaled and also served as a test pilot for the company. Rutan will remain with the […] White Knight 2 (WK2), the carrier aircraft under development by Scaled Composites for Virgin Galactic, will be rolled out on July 28, Virgin’s Will Whitehorn announced Thursday morning at the International Space Development Conference in Washington, DC. He didn’t announced the location of the rollout, but presumably it will be in Mojave, as he said […] I didn’t receive the original email blast from Scaled Composites about the health of Burt Rutan, but, like no doubt many readers, wanted to pass along my best wishes for a speedy recovery to him after undergoing open heart surgery earlier this month. Rutan was suffering from something called “constrictive pericardium”, which meant he suffered […] Many of the news reports about the SS2/WK2 design unveiling cover just the basics, repeating a lot of information that was already known about the effort. There are a few nuggets tucked away in the articles, though: Perhaps the biggest questions are when SS2 will fly, and what the status of investigation into the July […] |
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