Hyperbola is attending the Royal Aeronautical Society's space tourism "a new industry in the making" conference tomorrow, Tuesday 30 June. The all day event will feature Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn, Space Adventures vice president marketing and sales Tom Shelley, Xcor Aerospace chief executive (and US human spaceflght review committeee member) Jeff Greason operating officer Andrew Nelson, EADS Astrium's deputy chief technical officer Hugues Laporte-Weywada, the FAA's office of commercial space transportation head George Nield, and more

Hyperbola hopes to deliver pictures, audio and video interviews and tweets from the conference and maybe even the odd traditional print journalism story or two

UPDATED: The RAeS has told Hyperbola that no audio or video recording is allowed beyond individuals interviews. But expect a fair few tweets during sessions and I can probably squeeze in the odd photo

Mojave air and spaceport can still call itself that after a May award of a new licence to operate horizontal type launches. In 2004 for the X Prize SpaceShipOne (SS1) flights the airport was awarded a licence for launches by the White Knight, SS1 system into space and it was to expire this year on 17 June

Earlier this year Mojave's operations manager Bob Rice told Hyperbola that the airport had submitted a new application to cover the work it expected to do with SpaceShip Two. He said it had a specific number of test flights as part of that application but Rice declined to say how many that figure was

The US Federal Aviation Administration's office of commercial space transportation told Hyperbola that it could confirm that the licence had been renewed and that it was for five years and it was open ended on flight numbers but the launch system had to remain the same

An article in an Australian publication from April mentions a test flight number of 30 but over the years Hyperbola has heard a range of figures, slightly lower and substantially higher

And are those test flights all into space or does it include the early drop/glide tests, supersonic rocket powered level flights before the ascents and any other flight regime testing they wish to do that is not above 100km (62miles)?

All questions that can be asked of Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn at the Royal Aeronautical Society's space tourism conference taking place here in London on Tuesday 30 June

The BBC has video of WhiteKnight Two (WK2) overflying Las Cruces on Saturday 20 June but the terms of use for embedding it on other websites is for personal use only. As this is a commercial site I can't embed it but go here to find it and watch it. And if I am not mistaken you'll see the back of one Jeff Foust in the video, go Jeff!!

In the end WK2 over flew Las Cruces international airport after missing the ground breaking ceremony on the 19 June 72km (45 miles) north of Las Cruces city after an actuator warning forced the plane's pilots to divert to Phoenix Mesa Gateway airport. On 20 June WK2 flew from Phoenix to Las Cruces and back to Mojave airport, where it is based and which was having its own air show for the day

Find the full BBC report on the 19 June ground breaking ceremony with interviews here

Spaceport America has put out this press release about the plans for the second attempt at a flyover to celebrate the ground breaking for the spaceport

LAS CRUCES, NM - Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo vehicle is expected to fly over the Las Cruces International Airport at around 9:30 AM on Saturday, June 20. The aircraft was originally scheduled to fly over Southern New Mexico on Friday as part of the groundbreaking ceremonies for Spaceport America. Due to a minor technical issue with an actuator, WhiteKnightTwo made a technical stop in Phoenix. Due to approaching thunderstorms, it was decided not to move forward on Friday.

 

Weather permitting, the WhiteKnightTwo is expected to arrive around 9:30 AM and circle the Las Cruces International Airport three times before beginning its return trip to Mojave, California.

 

Scaled posted a report on 19 June about its prototype WhiteKnight Two's (WK2) tenth flight on that day and why it diverted to Phoenix-Mesa Gateway airport

En route testing above 40,000 feet was uneventful. During the descent toward the Spaceport America groundbreaking we experienced a failure of a speedbrake actuator. Based on facilities available and logistics for our ground crew, the pilots elected to make a precautionary landing at Williams Gateway airport near Phoenix. Our ground crew is on site and we hope to return to Mojave either this afternoon or tomorrow morning.

We now know that WK2 is still at Phoenix and likely to fly out today, 20 June, Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn sent this email to Hyperbola at about 1830h New Mexico local time on 19 June: "Now WK2 overflying Las Cruces and spaceport site at 9.30 tomorrow [20 June] morning NM time [1530h GMT]."

UPDATE: The pictures linked to below have been made private by the photographer, Joe Copalman, and were in fact not taken by a Matt Bearup as I erroneously wrote, apologies Joe. Mr Copalman has now posted this long distant shot of the aircraft

Go here to see a picture of Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnight Two coming into land and another here of the mothership sat on the deck care of the Flickr account of one Matt Bearup.

Shame Matt and his fellow snappers in that locale didn't get my message before they posted, there would have been a very nice bounty for the snapper that provided flightglobal.com with exclusive pictures of that aircraft at that airport

Speaking to Williams Gateway/Phoenix-Mesa Gateway airport again I've been told that as well as no photos (oops guess they lucked out there) the WK2 pilots don't want any press releases by the airport's management about its presence, too late! No press release needed


View Larger Map

Google Lunar X Prize's twitter feed has linked to the NextGiantLeap twitter account that reported that WhiteKnight Two was diverted during its flight to overfly the Spaceport America ground breaking ceremony and landed at a Phoenix, Arizona aiport

That diversion can be seen at this website FlightAware. Hyperbola has spoken to the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway airport at about noon local time today and have been told that WhiteKnight Two is sitting on the airport's cargo ramp and that its pilots do not want any pictures taken of the aircraft

Hyperbola will provide more infromation on the condition of the aircraft as soon as we get it

With comment from Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn find more information here

credit: / caption: this design has changed Will Whitehorn told the ISDC in May

As well as the Scaled Composites WhiteKnight Two flyover at about midday you can also look forward to liquid cheese the night before as part of the entertainment. What liquid cheese is I have no idea (unless it is the live music) but no doubt it is as innovative as the US invention that is hotdog on a stick. Read below and in the extended section of this blog post the details of Spaceport America's ground breaking event

Meanwhile Hyperbola will be at the world's biggest aerospace event the le Bourget salon aka Paris air show (that's Paris, France not Texas) so absoutely none of our editorial team can be there. Best of luck New Mexico Spaceport Authority - and Scaled ;-)

SPACEPORT AMERICA PRESS ADVISORY

June 5, 2009

SCHEDULE UPDATES

SPACEPORT AMERICA GROUNDBREAKING EVENT
SECOND NOTICE - REGISTRATION INSTRUCTIONS & EVENT SCHEDULE UPDATES

LAS CRUCES New updates to the Spaceport America groundbreaking events have been added to the schedule for Friday, June 19. Please go online at www.spaceportamerica.com/groundbreaking to see the up-to-date detailed event schedule. Members of the media are invited to attend the groundbreaking events, and special transportation provisions have been made for media. This advisory contains specific media-related information required for registration to attend the groundbreaking event.