Virgin Galactic Rolls Out White Knight Two

Virgin Galactic rolled out its White Knight Two aircraft, which is designed to loft the planned tourist spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of fifty thousand feet before launching it on suborbital flights with two pilots and six paying customers.

The White Knight Two roll-out took place at the Mojave Air Space Port and was attended by thousands of people, including Virgin Galactic CEO Sir Richard Branson, White Knight Two designer Burt Rutan, and Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Also included were at least one hundred future private astronauts who have already signed up for jaunts on SpaceShipTwo and were flown in especially for the occasion. SpaceShipTwo is scheduled for its rollout in 2009.

The White Knight Two aircraft, dubbed Eve in honor of Richard Branson's mother, is the world's largest all carbon composite built aircraft and has a wing space of 140 feet. White Knight Two has a maximum altitude of fifty thousand feet and can fly nonstop coast to coast across the United States. White Knight Two is powered by four Pratt and Whitney PW308A engines. White Knight Two is approximately the size of a World War II era B 29 bomber.

The effort by Virgin Galactic to create a space tourism business began in 2004 when Burt Rutan designed and built White Knight One and SpaceShipOne to win the X Prize, awarded to the first team to launch a space craft capable of carrying three people to an altitude of a hundred kilometers, turn the space craft around, and launch it again within two weeks. Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites team won the X Prize in October 2004.

On the occasion of the winning of the X Prize, Burt Rutan and Sir Richard Branson announced a joint venture to create what would be, in effect, the first private space line. Paying customers would be launched in suborbital flights to experience, at least for a brief time, the joys of weightlessness and the best view of the Earth most people will ever see.

Technical problems have delayed the start of this new space tourism service, slated now to begin in late 2009 or early 2010. A year ago three Scaled Composites employees were killed in an explosion during a test of rocket engine components.

The Virgin Galactic space tourism venture is just one of several that have taken off in recent years. A company called Bigelow Aerospace is testing subscale prototypes of an inflatable private space station. Companies such as XCOR and Blue Origins (founded by Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos) are also developing private space craft for the space tourism market. A company called SpaceX is developing an orbital space craft called the Dragon, designed to be launched on SpaceX's planned Falcon 9 launcher, and intended to, among other things, deliver supplies and crews to the International Space Station under contract for NASA.

Sources: Virgin Galactic shows off mothership aircraft, AP, July 28th, 2008
Virgin Galactic Rolls Out Mother Ship "Eve", Virgin Galactic, July 28th, 2008
Virgin Galactic Unveils Space Liner Mothership, Leonard David, Space.Com, July 28th 2008
Space Tourism: What's Next for 2009, Mark R. Whittington, Associated Content, June 4th, 2008
RIP: Charles Glenn May, Eric Blackwell, Todd Ivens, Mark R. Whittington, Associated Content, August 14th, 2007
A Brief History of Private Space Travel, Mark R. Whittington, Associated Content, October 6th, 2006
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