Jeff Foust has some reporting on Will Whitehorn’s talk at ISDC yesterday. In this post, he notes that White Knight 2 will roll out on July 28th, presumably in Mojave, and discusses other potential applications than just a first stage for SpaceShipTwo, including a satellite launcher. The lack of comment other than “we’ve learned some lessons” on the SS2 propulsion is interesting to me. It sounds like they’re still not sure what they’re going to do, which continues to put SS2 schedule (whatever it is) in jeopardy. I suspect that Sir Richard’s hype remains ahead of the actual program.
In this post Whitehorn mildly disses the Lynx:
XCOR is a company I respect, but with respect to them, they’re not building a spaceship. They’re building basically a high-altitude MiG equivalent. They’re building something that you can strap in and go up to 37 miles. You won’t get your astronaut wings but you will see the curvature of the earth. That will be an exciting project, but the problem is that it’s not a space project, and I think it’s been a little bit wrong to call it that.
While technically that’s true, it is a project that can easily evolve into a “space project,” which is what the program intent is. I don’t see this as a problem. In fact, I see it as a solution, because Virgin may have bitten off more than it could chew with SS2. In hindsight (and foresight for some of us) it might have been useful to develop more operational experience with a lower-performance vehicle before moving to a bigger one.
Really, the only thing lacking from the XCOR product is a lack of astronaut wings–it will certainly be a space experience, and a more personal one with a better view, sitting in the left seat. I think that the market for it will be bigger than Whitehorn claims to think.