SFS News: WhiteKnightTwo And SpaceShipTwo Presentation In ..

Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites plan to present their SpaceShipTwo with its WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft on January 23, 2008. Testing is planned to start in mid 2008 with the first commercial flights starting at the end of 2009.

SpaceShipTwo will carry six passengers and two pilots up to 130 kilometres and offer several minutes of weightlessness experience for a prize tag of $200.000. The first ship will be named VSS Enterprise, while the second one is named after adventurer Steve Fossett, VSS Spirit of Steve Fossett.

WhiteKnightTwo will be the carrier aircraft to lift SpaceShipTwo up to 15 kilometres altitude before SS2 will fire it’s hybrid rocket engine. It is about the size of a 737 jet.

The test flights will be flown from Mojave while the operational flights will take place from America’s Spaceport in New Mexico.

SpaceShipOne won the $10 million Ansari X-Prize in 2004 with 2 flights into space in one week following a test flight a few months earlier.

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Is there any more detail on this unveiling? Is it open to the general public?

Nothing more yet. I assume it will be at Scaled' in Mojave but as the crafts are not yet completely finished I guess it's non public in a hangar (with limited space).

It is supposed to be held at the American Museum of Natural History the 23rd in New York
-Arndorff

Yes, we had that and more details on the event one day later

Virgin Galactic Ready to Launch Space Travel Brand Designs – The Facts -

1 hour until the beginning of Virgin Galactic's press conference in New York.

More picture available under http://www.virgingalactic.com/flash.html

It sure looks hot. Not like the Antonov at all.

The white knight needs some rocket engines though, and the space ship needs more burn time.. all in due time I suppose :)

Why do you want to add rocket engines to the WhiteKnight?

i love it
love it to bits!!!!

To provide more delta-v and reach higher altitude before separation

It would need to be a Delta itself.

And instead of giving it engine you pipe fuel to the Spaceship. Or seal the front of the Jet engines.

New Videos Added http://spacefellowship.com/News/?p=4279#more-4279

Rob

Third video: It was obvious that they are building an experimental craft. I wonder about the costs and time required to build additional crafts as ordered from Virgin Galactic and potentially other customers.

I would say they at least have some room for "serial production procedures", to minimize needed time and costs *in case* they are capable of implementing these procedures as they have been all the time the "X-Craft Company".