Virgin Galactic’s Civil Spaceflights Nearing

According to Will Whitehorn, President of Virgin Galactic, the WhiteKnight Two space-launch vehicle is ready for its appearance at the EAA AirVenture airshow at Oshkosh on Monday 27 July. The aircraft will fly on two other show days and remain on static display for the rest of the week before returning to its Mojave base on Saturday 1 August.

The 140-ft wingspan WhiteKnight Two (WK2) is the largest aircraft ever built by Scaled Composites, the aerospace and specialty composite development company founded in 1982 by Burt Rutan. It is capable of lifting payloads of up to seventeen tons to altitudes greater than 50,000 feet. The all carbon composite WK2 is also known as “Mothership Eve” and is designed primarily to carry aloft Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip Two—another Scaled Composites product—and launch the suborbital spaceplane on its passenger-carrying flights.

SpaceShip Two uses a single hybrid rocket motor and, after launching from WK2 at 50,000 feet, will climb to an apogee of 68 miles above the earth. Re-entry will be relatively straightforward for SpaceShip Two, as its 2,600 mph speed allows almost total flexibility in re-entry profile when compared to the typical 16,000 mph speed of an orbital craft.

Passengers will typically pay up to $US200,000 for a two and a half hour flight that includes only a few minutes in space, but Virgin Galactic already has hundreds of paid-up applicants queuing for seats on early flights. Virgin Galactic is still hoping to unveil and drop-test SpaceShip Two in December this year.