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.
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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:
More details to come, but I wanted to give you some highlights first… Monday morning Virgin Galactic will be rolling out White Knight 2, the carrier aircraft that will be used to launch SpaceShipTwo, at Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The aircraft won’t be flying tomorrow, by all accounts: Virgin’s Will Whitehorn said in May that test flights of WK2 would likely begin in August or September. Still, Virgin is hyping up the event, even finding a way to tie its space tourism venture with a terrestrial airline: press and invited guests will be flown to Mojave from LAX on a Virgin America jet early Monday, and there may be other announcements tomorrow linking the two ventures. Indeed, as the AP reports this weekend, “The last time there was this level of buzz in the high desert north of Los Angeles was in 2004″ for the SpaceShipOne suborbital flights. (That’s a statement that could be perceived as something of an indictment of the lack of visible progress in the nearly four years since SS1 won the Ansari X Prize.) Meanwhile, Virgin Galactic continues to sign up customers, although one nationality is missing, The Sunday Mail reports: Scots. That’s particularly disappointing to Whitehorn, himself Scottish. “It really surprises me but there is still time before the first flight takes off,” he told the paper. One other item of note: according to the article Virgin has now sold 258 tickets for its suborbital flights, although it’s not clear from the article if they have collected the full $200,000 from all of those customers. Another 600 are ready to pay when commercial flights begin. Unfortunately for one potential customer, it will be a long time before Virgin is able to fly people to the Moon. Sorry, “Madge”. On Friday morning the Rocket Racing League held a press conference by telecon to discuss the company and their plans to exhibit and fly at EAA AirVenture this week in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. RRL president and CEO Granger Whitelaw provided a basic overview about the company and its plans going forward. While exhibition flights of RRL vehicles are slated to begin at Oshkosh, the first formal competitive races are not planned until late 2009 or early 2010; Whitelaw said there was a 12-month lead time to set up the TV deals for the races, and that the league wanted to avoid going head-to-head with major fall sports events, like the NFL. The big question, though, is whether both the XCOR- and Armadillo-powered vehicles will fly at Oshkosh. “We’re going to have both vehicles there,” Whitelaw said. “Whether or not the Armadillo-powered vehicle flies is in question right now.” The XCOR-powered vehicle, which will be operated by the Bridenstine Racing Team, does have its “pink slip” from the FAA allowing it to fly at Oshkosh, but the Armadillo vehicle does not. “Don’t ask me why, because it’s beyond me,” he said. “The plane’s been ready to fly for weeks.” After Oshkosh the RRL does have a number of exhibition events planned for this fall. A slide during Whitelaw’s presentation included the Reno Air Races in September, the Nellis AFB show in Las Vegas in November, and the X Prize Cup. Wait, how is that last one possible since there won’t be a formal X Prize Cup event this year, only the Lunar Lander Challenge (LLC) competition that will not be open to the public? “There is another event that is X Prize-driven,” he said, apparently referring to the LLC. “So I think we’re either going to fly there, or we’re going to have our own standalone event in Las Cruces in late October or early November.” My apologies for the lack of activity here of late; I have been juggling work and other projects. The good news is that you will see activity here ramping up in the days to come, in part because of events like the White Knight 2 rollout and Rocket Racing League flights at Oshkosh next week, but also to reflect other activity in the field. Also, look for some changes in the site design in the very near future as well. To update my earlier post, I spoke briefly yesterday with Eric Anderson of Space Adventures to try and clarify any apparent contradictions between the company’s announcements and statements by the Russian space agency Roskosmos. Anderson said that Perminov’s statement that he had “no information about such plans” was reference to reports about Sergey Brin flying to the station; Space Adventures, in fact, has not formally informed the Russians about Brin since he had not signed up for a specific flight yet. Perminov was apparently responding to some reports that Brin was going to be the next space tourist, which is not what Space Adventures announced last week. As for the “space tourism will be temporarily suspended” statement, Anderson said Perminov was referring to the period when the station crew size increases to six, which will make it more difficult to find a seat for a commercial passenger. “I’m not prepared to say it’s impossible,” he said, “but it is significantly more difficult.” Space Adventures does still have another flight opportunity in the spring of 2009, Anderson confirmed, but has not announced a customer for that mission. One other note: at the press conference last week, Brin was announced as the first member of Space Adventures’ “Orbital Mission Explorers Circle”. Anderson said that “within one hour” of that announcement, he had signed up the second member of that group, but did not identify that individual. An article in Saturday’s edition of Florida Today reports that NASA “was among the last to know” about Space Adventures’ plans for a dedicated Soyuz flight to the ISS in late 2011. Of course, NASA didn’t need to be consulted prior to the announcement, so that’s not too surprising, although NASA and the other international partners in the ISS will need to approve the overall mission plan, just as they do any major developments in the assembly and operation of the mission. A more serious issue, though, is whether the Russian space agency, Roskosmos, is on board. The Space Adventures press release about the mission includes a quote from a Roskosmos official, Alexey B. Krasnov, who says that the agency is “very pleased to continue working with Space Adventures into the foreseeable future.” However, in a statement published Thursday on the Roskosmos web site (in Russian), the head of the space agency, Anatoly Perminov, said he was unaware of any plans for sending additional tourists to the station, citing in particular Google co-founder Sergey Brin. “I have no information about such plans,” he said, according to a machine translation of the release. He added that as the station’s crew complement is expanded from three to six people, starting next year, “space tourism will be temporarily suspended”. The Roskosmos statement, though, doesn’t specifically mention the dedicated mission, or the possibility that the “temporarily suspended” period might stretch only from early 2009 (the last available seat on a regular Soyuz taxi flight) until the planned dedicated mission in late 2011. There’s more discussion about these conflicting statements at RussianSpaceWeb.com, while Flight’s Rob Coppinger expresses his own general skepticism about the announcement. I contacted Space Adventures on Friday to get some clarification on the nature of their agreement with Roskosmos, any why Perminov might think there’s no such deal, but have not received a response from the company. Here are some of the key items from this morning’s press conference held by Space Adventures about their future plans (see their press release for some additional details):
An intriguing short item in today’s San Jose Mercury News about the Space Adventures press conference later today:
Update: The New York Times has a more detailed report this morning, but with the same essential details. Brin clearly has an interest in space: he spoke by video at the unveiling of the Google Lunar X Prize last September, and Google has a close relationship with NASA’s Ames Research Center. And for someone of Brin’s wealth, the $25-30 million (or so) needed for an orbital flight is veritable pocket change. We’ll find out in a few hours if it’s true… 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 company as CTO and “chairman emeritus”, positions that Scaled said in the statement will allow him to focus on the company’s creative and entrepreneurial strengths. Rutan’s long-term future with Scaled had been in question given the health problems he had in the last several months (although he appeared in good health when he spoke at the International Space Development Conference in Washington last week), as well as the acquisition of the company by Northrop Grumman. “I suggested this change to our organizational structure because I want to focus on developing our talented, innovative team and ensuring we continue to provide our customers the creative technical approaches that only Scaled offers,” Rutan said in the Scaled statement. “I am successfully recovering from about 8 months of significant heart health challenges, and with this move look forward to many more years of fun here at Scaled.” |
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