XCOR flights help Mojave log over half of this century’s manned rocket vehicle flights
XCOR Press Release
Mojave, CA, Oct. 6, 2008 – With a series of flights, XCOR Aerospace has helped establish the small desert town of Mojave as the world capital of manned rocket vehicle flight.
When XCOR flew a rocket-powered aircraft eight times this week, Mojave Air and Space Port became the location of more than half of all manned rocket-powered vehicle take-offs and landings in the 21st century. The company also set a new informal record for the most flights of a single manned rocket-powered vehicle in a day, and cemented its lead as the company that has flown more than half of the world’s manned rocket-powered vehicle flights in the 21st century.
Continue reading ‘XCOR Flies Rocket-Powered Aircraft Eight Times in One Week’
Rocket Racing League’s Engine Switch Leaves Questions
Space.com
“A growing fleet of rocket-powered racers will fly with a liquid oxygen and alcohol engine developed by Armadillo Aerospace, instead of an XCOR Aerospace design used during the Rocket Racing League’s public debut earlier this summer…
“When we feel the XCOR engines meet our standards of safety, reliability, reusability, and performance for a rocket racer, then we may bring them back into the league,” Rocket Racing League co-founder and CEO Granger Whitelaw told SPACE.com last week.”
Rocket Racing League Completes Successful Flight Test Campaign at Oklahoma Spaceport
Press Release
The Rocket Racing League announces the successful results of the first seven test flights of the Bridenstine DKNY Rocket Racer conducted at the Oklahoma Spaceport (OKSP), a leading facility specializing in horizontal take-off and landing of Reusable Launch Vehicles, in Burns Flat, Oklahoma.
Continue reading ‘Armadillo Wins Nod over XCOR on Engines, DKNY Racer Completes Test Flights’
XCOR PRESS RELEASE
20 August 2008
XCOR Aerospace today announced that Desert Sky Holdings has become the first institutional investor in the aerospace company. Desert Sky Holdings follows the Boston Harbor Angels investment in XCOR last year, as well as continuing investment from well-known angel investors and industry trend setters such as Esther Dyson.
“Desert Sky’s commitment to XCOR is an important vote of confidence in the company,” says XCOR’s new Chief Operating Officer, Andrew Nelson, a former Morgan Stanley banker.
Continue reading ‘XCOR Gets First Institutional Investor’
Plenty Magazine has a piece about the race to build a suborbital rocketship that is a green, or at least one that is “environmentally benign” - whatever that means. Eliza Strickland interviews XCor’s Doug Graham and Virgin Galactic’s Stephen Attenborough about their companies’ efforts.
“[Xcor] built a small, two-seated vehicle powered by kerosene and liquid oxygen, which burns cleanly at about 6,000°F and emits no smoke or particulate matter,” Strickland writes. “Xcor has also helped design a methane-fueled engine; it’s an even greener technology because, unlike the petroleum-based kerosene, methane is a renewable energy source. ‘Theoretically, we could get the methane from anywhere, even from cow manure,’ Graham says.”
Virgin Galactic, on the other hand, is promoting how environmentally friendly its tiny spaceship is compared to the massive jumbo jets it flies across the Atlantic daily.
“The Virgin system uses less fuel because the rocket engine has to fire for only 90 seconds to reach thinner atmosphere. Attenborough says Virgin calculated that each of the rocket’s six passengers will have a carbon footprint totaling 0.8 metric tons of carbon dioxide; in comparison, a passenger on a 747 jet from New York to London is responsible for two metric tons.”
This is a bit like comparing apples and peanuts - in terms of vehicle sizes, distances covered, payload weights, number of passengers, and just about every other objective measure imaginable. SpaceShipTwo really doesn’t go anywhere; it takes off and lands at the same airport. It’s not a point-to-point transportation vehicle.
This all strikes me as rather dubious - an effort to justify what many consider to be a frivilous activity based on questionable comparisons.
XCOR Begins Lynx Build
Rob Coppinger
Hyperbola Blog
Coppinger has photos of XCOR’s Lynx high-altitude tourism vehicle, now being assembled at the company’s facility in Mojave, Calif.
XCOR Rocket Engine to Continue Flight Testing
Rob Coppinger
Flight Global
XCOR Aerospace is by July to restart flight testing its XR-4K14 1,500lb-thrust (6.67kN) liquid oxygen/kerosene engine and the aircraft it propels, the Rocket Racing League’s X-Racer…The XR-4K14 is the predecessor to Xcor’s single-stage-to-suborbit Lynx vehicle’s 5K18 engine and it will have changes made to its piston driven pump’s drive gas consumption before flight testing resumes.
Dale Hawkins of The Tehachapi News has the latest goings-on at the Mojave Air & Space Port, America’s only licensed civil-use spaceport. Scaled Composites is busy at work on SpaceShipTwo, XCOR is building its Lynx spaceplane, Rocket Propulsion Engineering Corporation is testing - of all things - rockets, and the National Test Pilot School is training new aviators.
Jeff Foust takes a look at what one expert calls an emerging “horse race” between companies in the suborbital tourism arena over at The Space Review.
Although Virgin Galactic has gotten much of the attention, XCOR, Rocketplane Global, Armadillo Aerospace, EADS Astrium and other companies are competing to send tourists on the ultimate joy ride. They are all taking somewhat different approaches to this challenge.
“If it is a horse race, who will win the ultimate prize: not just the first vehicle to enter the market, but the one that wins the market in the long run?” Foust writes. “The diversity of technical approaches, from the takeoff and landing techniques to the number of passengers, makes any predictions difficult.”
Rand Simberg has a few comments about Jeff’s article over at Transterrestrial Musings that are worth a look.
Rob Coppinger has posted detailed notes of his interview with XCOR’s chief engineer Dan DeLong on his Hyperbola blog. DeLong discusses the Lynx Mk. 1’s technical details and flight profile. He also provides information about the more powerful Mk. 2 version.
XCOR’s announcement about its Lynx high-altitude vehicle has generated a lot of buzz about how Lynx stacks up with space tourism vehicles being developed by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and EADS Astrium.
Officials at the Mojave, Calif.-based XCOR say their vehicle will soar to about 200,000 feet (38 miles/61 km) beginning in 2010. Although this is below the 262,500-foot (50 mile/80 km) altitude at which the U.S. Air Force has awarded astronaut wings, the pilot and passenger would still experience about 90 seconds of weightlessness in the small cockpit of the business jet style vehicle.
The company plans to offer flights for about half the cost of Virgin Galactic, which has been selling suborbital tickets for $200,000. XCOR also plans to build a more powerful version of the Lynx that will fly to over 360,000 feet (68 miles/110 km).
Continue reading ‘Lynx vs. Virgin Galactic vs. EADS: How They Stack Up’
XCOR PRESS RELEASE
Los Angeles, March 26, 2008 – A small California aerospace company today unveiled a new suborbital spaceship that will provide affordable front-seat rides to the edge of space for the millions of people who want to buy a ticket.
The company, XCOR Aerospace, of Mojave, CA, announced that its two-seat Lynx suborbital spaceship will carry people or payloads to where they will experience weightlessness and see the stars above and the Earth and its atmosphere below. This will launch XCOR into the emerging space tourism market, estimated at over a half-billion dollars.
The Lynx will offer affordable access to space for individuals, researchers and educators,” said XCOR CEO Jeff Greason. “Future versions of Lynx will offer ever-improving capabilities for scientific and engineering research and commercial applications.
The spaceship, roughly the size of a small private airplane, will first take off in 2010 and will be capable of flying several times each day.
Continue reading ‘XCor Unveils the Lynx; New Vehicle Will Fly to the Edge of Space’