XCOR Aerospace Receives Launch License

IT seems XCor got their license.

http://x-prize.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_ ... 1439998510


XCOR is not competing in the X PRIZE, they do plan to participate in the followon X PRIZE CUP.

i saw the picture of their vehicle, but i haven't followed their testing at all. are they to the point of powered flights yet or do they still have a ways to go?

The only vehicle I have seen is EZ rocket, apart from some cgi images of Xerus. Are there some pictures of the actual hardware for this spaceplane? All I know about it is that it is supposed to take off from the runway under its own power and land without a carrier aircraft. I have wondered for awhile, if they might be working with Scaled on this for the airframe. Xcor cannot enter this vehicle in the Xprize, as they have stated that this vehicle (which apparently is not Xerus) would not meet the requirements of the contest. If so, they wouldnt be violating any rules by working with a competitor. I mention this because Xcor is based in Mojave too, and was formed primarily from former Rotary employees. Scaled did a lot of airframe work for Rotary, and employees at least one former Rotary test pilot (Binnie). I would suppose Xcor already has a relationship with Scaled, from the work done on EZrocket, although that LongEZ was already in existance. It belonged (belongs?) to someone that works at Xcor, though I can't remember who.

And of course, the OTHER Rutan flies for Xcor.

Well Rutan has mentioned that they are doing a lot of confidential work at their facility for other people in one of his interviews. It wouldn't surpirse me at all if some of that work was for Xcor.

From their site.


I guess that implies they still have a way to go...?

Well, even though the complete Xerus is a long way off, XCOR does have the engines built and tested:

According to CEO Jeff Greason, “We are very excited about the new engine since it moves us closer to our goal of a reliable and economical vehicle for space tourism as well as educational and commercial uses. The more powerful engine and use of readily available and nontoxic fuels is a notable development in reliability and cost control of operating suborbital vehicles.
The XR-4K5 also uses XCOR's most recent electrical igniter design, smaller and lighter than previous generations.
XCOR is developing the XR-4K5 for future applications, including the propulsion system for the Xerus project.”

Maybe I'm missing something, but I was under the impression that the launch license was exclusively for development of a prototype of the Xerus, I got this conception from:



However there doesn't seem to be size limitations, just that it can't carry paying passengers. What does this mean for XCor?

Will they build a full scale vehicle in an attempt to carry out extensive flight testing assuming that this will result in a full license?

Will they get the necessary funding for a full vehicle without a full license? I'll be watching this one very closely.

I have another question. Could you use a vehicle like this for long haul passenger flights? The limitation would probably be that it could only carry a handful of passengers.

However ideally, I'd like to operate a vehicle that could go suborbital and back to Earth again, or fly Sydney to London direct in some rediculously small time.

Yeah, bud, you and all the rest of us.

Damned kiwis.