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WhiteKnightTwo mothership unveiled in Mojave
| Wednesday, Jul 30 2008 7:01 PM
Last Updated: Tuesday, Jul 29 2008 7:27 AM
MOJAVE — Leave it to a billionaire and an aviation pioneer to bring space, the final frontier, a little bit closer to the rest of us.
Eve, the mothership, will be the largest 100 percent carbon-composite plane in service.
Wingspan: 140 feet
Length: 78 feet
Tail height: 25 feet
Engines: Four Pratt & Whitney PW308s
Gear: Quadricycle gear configuration, retractable
SpaceShipTwo
Wingspan: 42 feet
Length: 60 feet
Tail height: 18 feet
Capacity: Six passengers, two pilots
Gear: Tricycle configuration
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After a short countdown, a white sheet inside a hangar at Scaled Composites dropped to reveal WhiteKnightTwo and its proud papas: Sir Richard Branson and Burt Rutan, beaming, waving and flashing peace signs.
WhiteKnightTwo is the workhorse vehicle that will take people and payloads into suborbital space via SpaceShipTwo.
It can fly to 50,000 feet and then release SpaceShipTwo, which will reach 360,000 feet.
With a pop and burst of champagne, WhiteKnightTwo was christened “Eve” after Branson’s mother, Eve, who accompanied her son.
Eve is an appropriate name because the craft is a first, Branson said.
The unveiling was “like being at the birth of a baby,” he said. “It’s been a challenging birth.”
Branson’s Virgin Galactic is selling tickets on SpaceShipTwo for $200,000, and he’s using Rutan’s technology to do it.
“If our new system could carry only people into space, that would be enough for me,” Branson said. There will be opportunities for Virgin to collaborate with scientists and ferry experiments into space.
Branson believes space flight will be a transformative experience that will show people the fragility of the planet.
Virgin has an ambitious goal: to take 50,000 people into space in the next decade.
So far, 270 passengers have paid deposits, ranging from $20,000 to $200,000 to fly with Virgin for about two hours.
Scott Painter, 39, a Los Angeles-based entrepreneur, is looking forward to experiencing weightlessness and the view.
“What could be cooler than going into space?” he said. The price is an “inexpensive cost relative to what we’re going to be allowed to do,” he said.
SpaceShipTwo’s cabin could carry 11 passengers but will instead take eight.
“Richard wants to sell only window seats,” Rutan quipped.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin wants to see more people go into space.
“The only way to get into orbit is with the Russians. That’s not too tasteful to me,” he said.
Another company, Space Adventures, uses Russian Soyuz rockets to take paying customers to the International Space Station.
Mojave-based XCOR Aerospace’s Lynx craft is also in the space-tourism mix.
Ground tests on WhiteKnightTwo are slated to begin Tuesday. Flight tests are expected to begin this fall, and SpaceShipTwo will carry cargo for the first time in 2009. Depending on how well Eve’s flight tests go, SpaceShipTwo could start its own testing in 2009.
On Monday, SpaceShipTwo was parked in the hangar, a large black tarp suggesting its Shamu-like silhouette.
Virgin Galactic will eventually move its U.S. operations to Las Cruces, New Mexico. Kiruna, Sweden, will host a space port. Will Whitehorn, Virgin Galactic’s president, said the company is in talks with other nations for future space ports.
Super-fast travel is on the drawing board, too, such as traveling from London to Los Angeles in two hours.