XCOR Aerospace moved a step closer to moving its headquarters from Mojave, California, to Midland, Texas, on Friday with a ceremony marking the beginning of renovations [...]]]>

A 2012 photo of the hangar at Midland International Airport being renovated for XCOR. That renovation, first announced in July 2012, officially gets underway today. (credit: XCOR Aerospace)

XCOR Aerospace moved a step closer to moving its headquarters from Mojave, California, to Midland, Texas, on Friday with a ceremony marking the beginning of renovations of a hangar that the company will call home. The company, along with airport and other local officials, held a “ceremonial wall breaking” at the hangar at Midland International Airport to mark the beginning of renovations being done by the airport to host the company.

“Midland stands at the heart of the American frontier,” XCOR CEO Jeff Greason said in a statement announcing the beginning of the hangar renovations, “It is a symbol of the American West. As the first tenant in the commercial space industry to plant our home here we are honored to expand those opportunities not westward, but upward.”

Local officials are funding the renovation of the hangar as part of incentives it provided to XCOR two years ago to entice them to move to Midland. Once the hangar is ready and the airport has a spaceport license from the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, XCOR will move its operations there. “We look forward to the transformation of Midland International Airport into the ‘Midland International Air and Spaceport,'” said John B. Love, a member of the Midland city council and chairman of the city’s Spaceport Development Board, in the statement.

Getting the spaceport license is likely the next major milestone. Local officials are expecting the FAA to make a decision on its application by next month. One concern that arose during the licensing process was the effect that flights of XCOR’s Lynx would have on the “lesser prairie chicken”, a threatened species. Local media reported earlier this month that the government would monitor early Lynx flights to see if they caused any harm, a decision that appears to allow the spaceport license to go forward.

Renovations of the hangar at the Midland airport will start “immediately” after today’s ceremony, local officials said in the statement, with a goal of completing them by early next summer. XCOR would presumably then be able to start moving in.

As for XCOR’s work on Lynx, company president Andrew Nelson said in the statement that the flight test program will start this winter. “As XCOR commences the Lynx flight test program this winter, the hangar construction signals the end of the beginning for our team. The next step is to get Lynx flying,” he said.

Like XCOR’s development of Lynx, getting Midland ready for the company has taken a little longer than expected. When the deal was announced in July 2012, XCOR said that the renovation of the hangar would start in early 2013 and be done by late autumn of that year.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced Tuesday it has awarded study contracts to three teams, representing a mix of established and entrepreneurial space companies, to study concepts for a reusable suborbital spaceplane.

DARPA said [...]]]>

Boeing’s concept for the XS-1 spaceplane, one of three selected by DARPA for Phase 1 studies. (credit: Boeing)

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced Tuesday it has awarded study contracts to three teams, representing a mix of established and entrepreneurial space companies, to study concepts for a reusable suborbital spaceplane.

DARPA said it awarded contracts to three teams: Boeing, working with Blue Origin; Masten Space Systems, working with XCOR Aerospace; and Northrop Grumman, working with Virgin Galactic. The contracts, for phase one of the Experimental Spaceplane 1 (XS-1) program, cover initial design work on concepts for the vehicle, designed to serve as a reusable lower stage of a low-cost launch system for medium-sized satellites.

“We chose performers who could prudently integrate existing and up-and-coming technologies and operations, while making XS-1 as reliable, easy-to-use and cost-effective as possible,” said DARPA XS-1 program manager Jess Sponable in a DARPA statement announcing the contracts. “We’re eager to see how their initial designs envision making spaceflight commonplace—with all the potential military, civilian and commercial benefits that capability would provide.”

The DARPA statement did not reveal the size of the contracts. However, DARPA has earlier announced, though a Federal Business Opportunities posting, a contract award to Masten valued at just under $3 million. Boeing, in its own press release about the contract, said its contract was valued at $4 million, although it wasn’t clear if that included any award to Blue Origin.

Boeing also released an illustration of its XS-1 concept, a winged vehicle. “Boeing brings a combination of proven experience in developing launch systems and reusable space vehicles, along with unparalleled expertise in the development and fielding of highly operable and cost-effective transportation systems,” said Steve Johnston, director of Boeing’s Phantom Works Advanced Space Exploration division, in the Boeing release.

The goal of the XS-1 program is to develop a vehicle capable of flying ten times in ten days, including at one least one flight to Mach 10. The XS-1, coupled with an expendable upper stage, would be able to launch satellites weighing up to about 2,270 kilograms into low Earth orbit for no more than $5 million a flight. The vehicle could also serve as hypersonics technology testbed. DARPA will select a company in a Phase 2 some time next year to build the XS-1.

See update below.

In late May, XCOR announced that it has raised a $14.2-million Series B funding round that would fund continued development of its Lynx suborbital vehicle. The [...]]]>

XCOR Aerospace has acquired the operational subsidiaries of company that had been the major sales agency for flights of the Lynx vehicle. (credit: XCOR Aerospace)

See update below.

In late May, XCOR announced that it has raised a $14.2-million Series B funding round that would fund continued development of its Lynx suborbital vehicle. The round was led by Space Expedition Corporation (SXC), the Dutch company that had been selling Lynx flights in recent years. Two of SXC’s officers, Michiel Mol and Mark Hoogendoorn, joined the XCOR board as part of the deal.

On Monday, SXC and XCOR worked out another deal. XCOR Aerospace announced it was acquiring SXC’s “operational subsidiaries”, which would now be known as XCOR Space Expeditions and operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of XCOR. The company declined to announce the terms of the deal beyond that it was an all-stock transaction.

“With this acquisition XCOR Space Expeditions will provide direct connection to the XCOR brand and more up-to-date information about Lynx for individual ticket holders, wet lease customers and commercial partners,” said Mol, a co-founder of SXC who will retain his position on the XCOR board. “The result is an integrated XCOR that will inspire our customers and investors, and deliver a more seamless and exciting experience overall.”

SXC has its origins as Space Experience Curaçao, which, as the name suggests, planned to perform suborbital spaceflights from the Caribbean island of Curaçao, a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. SXC announced plans in 2010 to “wet lease” a Lynx from XCOR, an arrangement designed to allow Lynx flights outside the US and comply with US export control regulations. In 2011, SXC signed an “eight-figure” wet lease contract with XCOR, with plans to begin flights in Curaçao in 2014. In 2012, SXC (which by this time had become Space Expedition Corporation) agreed to become a sales agent for XCOR Lynx flights.

Update: while the headline of the XCOR press release is “XCOR Aerospace Acquires Space Expedition Corporation,” the acquisition is a bit more complex than that. As XCOR spokesman Bryan Campen explained in an email Wednesday, SXC operated multiple subsidiaries, including those responsible for flight sales and operations, and a joint venture for sales in Asia. In Monday’s deal, XCOR acquired those subsidiaries from SXC; those subsidiaries will continue to operate much as they did before, but under new ownership and the new XCOR Space Expeditions name.

The parent SXC company (formally named Space Expedition Corporation, N.V.) was not acquired in the deal and continues to exist as a “passive investment holding company,” according to XCOR. SXC received XCOR common stock in exchange for the SXC subsidiaries, in a transaction separate from the stock SXC received as part of its investment in XCOR announced in May.

XCOR Aerospace announced Tuesday that it has raised a “Series B” funding round of $14.2 million, led by one of its partners. Space Expedition Corporation (SXC) is [...]]]>

A $14-million funding round announced this week will give XCOR Aerospace the financial runway it needs to bring the Lynx suborbital spaceplane to market. (credit: XCOR Aerospace)

XCOR Aerospace announced Tuesday that it has raised a “Series B” funding round of $14.2 million, led by one of its partners. Space Expedition Corporation (SXC) is taking an undisclosed stake in XCOR, enough to warrant two of its officers, Michiel Mol and Mark Hoogendoorn, to join XCOR’s current five-member board of directors. Several other existing and new investors joined in the round, including Esther Dyson and Pete Ricketts, and the company is in discussions with “a few more potential investors” who may join this summer. (An SEC filing by XCOR earlier this year indicated that the company was seeking to raise as much as $20 million.)

SXC, originally known as Space Experience Curaçao, is one of XCOR’s major customers, selling seats on future flights by XCOR’s Lynx suborbital spaceplane. SXC plans to “wet lease” Lynx vehicles from XCOR for operations from the Caribbean island of Curaçao. SXC is based in the Netherlands, and as such the investment was reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an office of the Treasury Department that vets foreign investments in some industries. XCOR said in the statement announcing the investment that CFIUS had cleared the investment.

The investment, according to the release, will fund XCOR’s work on Lynx to bring the suborbital spaceplane to market. The prototype Lynx Mark I is being assembled at XCOR’s Mojave facility, and company officials said earlier this month that they expect tests of that prototype to begin later this year. “This investment will allow us to accelerate and run in parallel several final developments in the critical path to first flight,” XCOR CEO Jeff Greason said in the announcement.

Once the test flight program starts for the Lynx, it will be at least a year before commercial flights will begin. In a presentation at the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Los Angeles earlier this month, XCOR test pilot and former astronaut Rick Searfoss said he anticipated a test flight program of 12 to 18 months, depending on the progress the company makes on the incremental series of test flights.

XCOR is also getting ready to move its operations from Mojave Air and Space Port in California to Midland International Airport in Texas. Officials there said earlier this month that they’re making progress on getting a spaceport license from the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, and expect to get approval by September 15. Work is also underway there to remodel a hangar that XCOR will use.

One decade ago, hopes were high for suborbital space tourism. Scaled Composites had performed the first powered test flight of SpaceShipOne in December of 2003, and other than a minor landing mishap, the company seemed to be on track for [...]]]>

SpaceShipTwo during its first powered test flight on April 29, 2013. (credit: Virgin Galactic/MarsScientific.com)

One decade ago, hopes were high for suborbital space tourism. Scaled Composites had performed the first powered test flight of SpaceShipOne in December of 2003, and other than a minor landing mishap, the company seemed to be on track for flying into space in the new year, putting it on the inside track to win the $10-million Ansari X PRIZE before it expired at the end of 2004. That, many believed, would usher in an era of suborbital space tourism by Scaled and other companies, including other X PRIZE competitors, in the following years.

The future, though, turned out a little differently. Scaled did win the X PRIZE with SpaceShipOne, performing suborbital flights in late September and early October of 2004 (as well as a test flight in June.) Scaled also announced a deal with Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, establishing a venture called Virgin Galactic that planned to perform flights using a new vehicle, called SpaceShipTwo, as soon as late 2007.

But six years after that initial start date, SpaceShipTwo is still not yet in commercial service. Building a new, and bigger, vehicle, with a larger version of the hybrid rocket motor that powered SpaceShipOne has turned out to be a far greater challenge than expected in the heady days of 2004. And the other teams who were competing for the X PRIZE in the early 2000s have largely faded away—the da Vinci Project, anyone?

Still, there are signs of optimism for 2014. While development of SpaceShipTwo has been slow, Virgin Galactic did achieve some milestone in 2013, most notably the first powered flight of the vehicle in April. However, more than four months passed before SS2 made a second powered flight, in early September. A third powered flight was reportedly planned for mid-December but scrubbed by poor weather; it’s likely to be rescheduled for early January, after the holiday break ends for Scaled and Virgin.

Virgin did put the year’s developments in a positive perspective in a blog post by Branson on Monday, which included a 90-second video recap of highlights of the past year. It also included undated footage of a full-duration (approximately 55 seconds) burn of a hybrid rocket engine on a test stand; that engine has long been perceived as the limiting factor in SpaceShipTwo’s development.

“We are truly in the final phase of preparations for commercial service,” George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic, said in the video. When that commercial service will begin isn’t stated, but the company expects that to be some time in 2014; coverage of Virgin’s deal with NBC Universal to broadcast the first commercial SpaceShipTwo flight mentioned a date of August 2014. That, though, is contingent on Virgin making sufficient progress on the test program, which appears to be going slowly so far.

Virgin isn’t the only company in the suborbital spaceflight market. Just down the flightline at Mojave Air and Space Port from Scaled and The Spaceship Company (the Virgin-owned entity that will manufacture SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo vehicles), XCOR Aerospace has been working on its Lynx vehicle. Its development has also been slow going, although the company has in recent months been actively blogging work on the Lynx and associated activities, like engine tests. In the company’s most recent release, about a payload integrator agreement with the Czech Space Office, XCOR said flights of the Lynx Mark I prototype will begin in 2014.

XCOR is selling seats on the Lynx through another company, Space Expedition Corporation, or SXC. It’s best known for the contest it held in 2013 with Unilever, whose products include Axe deodorants and related products. That worldwide contest culminated earlier this month with Axe Apollo Space Academy, which awarded 23 trips on Lynx flights earlier this month to contestants after a week of testing and training in Florida.

Blue Origin is also working, slowly, on a suborbital vehicle. In early December, it issued a press release and held a media teleconference—both rare events for the publicity-averse company—to discuss a test of its BE-3 rocket engine, which flew a simulated suborbital flight profile. Company president Rob Meyerson said suborbital flights of its New Shepard vehicle should begin “in the next several years,” without being more specific.

While Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and XCOR Aerospace all plan to continue development of their suborbital vehicles for space tourism and research activities in 2014, a fourth company is unlikely to follow. In August, Armadillo Aerospace founder John Carmack said in a speech that his company was out of funds and in “hibernation mode” because of a lack progress after a suborbital test flight in January that suffered a parachute failure. Carmack said the company would remain in hibernation until he found an outside investor or “there’s another liquidity event where I’m comfortable throwing another million dollars a year into things,” as he had previously supported the company with his “crazy money” that he has since exhausted.

Masten Space Systems is not in the suborbital space tourism business—its focus is on flying experiments and technology demonstrations—but it has been quietly working on some vehicles. At the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC) in Colorado in June, Masten chief operating officer Sean Mahoney called 2013 “a critical year” for the company as it decides whether to continue work on low-level technology demonstrators or pursue a suborbital vehicle that can fly to 100 kilometers. If the company has made a decision on its direction for 2014, it’s kept that quiet so far.

The article linked to in the preceding paragraph also shows how the schedule slips for other companies continue: at NSRC less than seven months ago, Virgin Galactic was predicting test flights of SpaceShipTwo to space by the end of the year, while XCOR said Lynx text flights would begin by late in the year. Neither, though, happened. As 2014 begins, companies continue to promise major developments, but the slow progress and delayed schedules of the past suggest that people should continue to be patient.

The two companies in the lead to fly crewed suborbital spacecraft announced milestones earlier this week towards the beginning of powered flight tests of their vehicles. On Friday, Virgin Galactic released images of an oxidizer tank being [...]]]>

An image from Virgin Galactic of the liquid oxidizer tank being installed in SpaceShipTwo. (credit: Virgin Galactic)

The two companies in the lead to fly crewed suborbital spacecraft announced milestones earlier this week towards the beginning of powered flight tests of their vehicles. On Friday, Virgin Galactic released images of an oxidizer tank being installed in SpaceShipTwo. The tank is a major element of the spacecraft’s hybrid propulsion system, which uses nitrous oxide as a liquid oxidizer along with a solid fuel.

The tank installation also inspired a blog post on the corporate Virgin website by Sir Richard Branson. In it, he drops a hint that the current hybrid propulsion system, which Virgin has billed as being environmentally friendly, might be replaced by something even more benign. “We’re now looking at some exciting future plans which could radically lower each flight’s remaining environmental footprint. More on that in due course!”

As for when that first powered test flight might take place, Virgin Galactic has, as it has done so for years, emphasized they’re focused on safety rather than making schedule. Even Branson didn’t offer much in his post. “[W]e’re leaving no stone unturned as we approach the first supersonic, rocket-powered flights of SpaceShipTwo,” he writes. “Our amazing engineers and pilots are preparing right now for the first powered spaceship flight, which should be followed with a fairly quick build up to Virgin’s first proper step across the final frontier!”

In a talk last month at the AIAA Space 2012 conference in Pasadena, California, Steve Isakowitz, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Virgin Galactic, said the company had set an “aggressive” goal of an initial powered flight by the end of the year. That, however, he added that schedule would be paced on how things were coming together.

As Virgin gets SpaceShipTwo ready at one area of Mojave Air and Space Port in California, in another area XCOR Aerospace is getting making progress on its Lynx Mark 1 prototype spaceplane. At the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) in Las Cruces, New Mexico, on Thursday, XCOR COO Andrew Nelson announced that the company had completed another major test just Wednesday: firing the liquid oxygen and kerosene engines while mounted in a “flight-weight fuselage” with “real” pumps. The engines were “spewing out fire at our test site in Mojave,” he said. “It was an exciting day for XCOR.” Video of the engine test, he said, should be released in the next week.

XCOR had previously indicated they planned to start low-level (“air under the gear”) flight tests, part of a larger series of incremental tests of the Lynx, by late this year. Those flights appear to have slipped into early next year, based on Nelson’s comments at ISPCS. “We are progressing quickly on building and fielding the Lynx and flying it in the new year,” he said.

After all the news that came out from Friday through Sunday, the actual announcement of XCOR’s deal with the Midland Development Corporation (MDC) to [...]]]>

Texas Gov. Rick Perry appears particularly excited to see a full-scale mockup of the XCOR Lynx suborbital spaceplane Monday in Midland, alongside XCOR chief test pilot Rick Searfoss. (credit: XCOR)

After all the news that came out from Friday through Sunday, the actual announcement of XCOR’s deal with the Midland Development Corporation (MDC) to locate its headquarters and R&D center in the West Texas city was something of an anticlimax. Most of the details of the deal were already released; during a half-hour teleconference with reporters monday afternoon, XCOR officials sometimes referred to those accounts, like one Sunday in the local newspaper, the Midland Reporter-Telegram, when asked for details about the incentives MDC is providing XCOR.

Earlier in the day, XCOr did get an endorsement from Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who appeared at a separate news conference for local media in Midland. “We couldn’t be happier to welcome XCOR to the Lone Star State, and we couldn’t be prouder to be home to their new Research and Development center,” he said in prepared remarks, most of which focused on more general business and employment issues, as he played up how business-friendly the state is.

XCOR officials also made note of that pro-business environment as part of their reason for locating in Texas. “We do, of course, welcome the friendly regulatory and business climate in the state,” XCOR president Jeff Greason said. “There was no one factor that made the decision make sense for us. It really was the ensemble of a whole lot of positives and no serious negatives.”

But what attracted Midland to XCOR? Local officials said they were looking to diversify the economy, which leans heavily on the oil industry, and saw aviation and aerospace as a likely target to go after. But asked why specifically XCOR, given the wide array of other aerospace companies out there, they weren’t able to offer much in the way of specific rationales. “Wow. Just looking at XCOR I think that question’s already answered,” said Marv Easterly, director of Midland International Airport, where XCOR will set up shop. “It’s probably the neatest thing that I’ve ever seen.”

“When we were looking at the right fit for our community, taking a chance with bringing in the first large company in our target industry, the fact that they were a leader in this new type of industry, the fact that they had an established business plan,” sad MDC chairman Laura Romans.

Greason and Andrew Nelson, XCOR’s COO, emphasized that this was an expansion, not a move, and that they would maintain an operations base in Mojave, where they’re currently developing the prototype Mark 1 version of their Lynx suborbital spaceplane. That work will continue in Mojave as Midland renovates the hangar that XCOR will lease there and while the airport gets an FAA spaceport license, a process they expect to take up to 18 months. Mojave will also be a base for operational flights. Nelson said that if they later get a “wet lease” customer for the Lynx flying out of Mojave, “we’d be open to that wet lease customer assuming that operation” from XCOR itself.

Development of later versions of the Lynx, though, will take place in Midland. Greason said flight tests of the Mark 2 version of the Lynx, capable of going to 100 kilometers, will take place in Midland. The company is also planning a Mark 3 version for nanosatellite launches and even an orbital system that will start “ramping up” in a few years, Nelson said. “We see over a hundred employees over the next four to five years” in Midland, he said. And that’s music to Midland’s ears.