White Knight: May 2009 Archives

At the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Orlando, Florida today Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn said that he "could confirm" that SpaceShip Two (SS2) would fly before the end of the year and that he hoped the SS2 could be air launched by its mothership WhiteKnight Two (WK2) prototype Eve and glide back to Earth

Whitehorn also confirmed that Eve would overfly the 19 June ground breaking ceremony of Spaceport America in Las Cruces on a non-stop round trip and that the mothership would fly into the EAA Airventure, Oshkosh, air show on 28 July and carry out demonstration flights during that week

He also spoke about the completion of firing tests for what he called "rocket motor two," video of which can be seen here. Speculating further on the future Whitehorn talked about bio-butanol based fuel produced by algae being used by WK2's Pratt & Whitney Canada 308A engines

Hyperbola watched Whitehorn's ISDC presentation via spacevidcast.com

Scaled Composites has abandoned years of silence about its development programmes and has begun posting flight test logs for the WhiteKnight Two mothership beginning with the 20 May flight. Over the months to come it can only get more interesting

Find here the SpaceShipOne mothership WhiteKnight flight test logs from 2002 to 2004

credit Flight / caption: WhiteKnight Two makes fifth flight one month after its fourth

Yesterday on 20 May Scaled Composite's WhiteKnight Two prototype Virgin Mothership Eve flew for the fifth time

Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn has told Hyperbola that the test lasted 3h and that: "Flight 5 has been a great success as it tested the full cabin pressurisation system and environmental control systems. Finally on landing there was an emergency landing drill test which all in all now paves the way for the next flights can start to push the envelope on altitude etc."

Go through to the extended portion of the blog for the update

In the video shown below, care of Clark Lindsey's Space Transport News link to the 62 Mile Club website, Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn gives an end of year date for the first flight of WhiteKnight Two prototype Virgin Mothership Eve with SpaceShipTwo attached and an end of 2010 target for the first flight, test flight I would imagine, of SpaceShip Two above 100km (62 miles). He then mentions a licensing process with the US Federal Aviation Administration, suggesting a commercial in-service date of sometime in 2011. However in this story from Australia a Virgin Galactic customer suggests 2012 is more likely and other customers have given Hyperbola a similar date