This story was updated Monday
at 10:22 a.m. EDT.
A carrier aircraft designed
to be the first stage of a commercial spaceline system made its maiden test
flight today at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.
Designed by Scaled
Composites, the huge and unique
WhiteKnightTwo mothership rolled down the runway and muscled itself into
the air using four Pratt and Whitney PW308A turbofan engines. The
WhiteKnightTwo flew for about an hour, departing the runway at roughly 8:17
a.m. Pacific Standard Time, safely touching down at the Mojave Air and Space
Port at approximately 9:17 a.m. PST.
"It's a big day,"
said Stuart Witt, general manager of Mojave Air and Space Port. "I think
it's a real reflective time. When everybody's looking for a bailout, there are
still people that are doing something for a much larger reason," he told SPACE.com.
After a number of shakeout
flights, the WhiteKnightTwo is to be outfitted with the now-under-construction SpaceShipTwo.
That rocket plane is also being built by Scaled Composites of Mojave,
California. Ultimately WhiteKnightTwo is to carry the space plane to altitude,
where it will then detach and head for suborbital space flights.
The WhiteKnightTwo/SpaceShipTwo
combo is to serve as the backbone of Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic suborbital
spaceline operations.
Virgin Galactic has on
order five SpaceShipTwo rocket planes and two of the carrier craft, with
options on more.
Given a progressive roster
of test evaluations at the Mojave Air and Space Port, the spaceline system is
to be commercially operated at the now-under-construction Spaceport America in
New Mexico. The price tag per seat on the two pilot/six passenger suborbital
SpaceShipTwo is $200,000.
Flight details
The hour-long test flight
of WhiteKnightTwo made use of a minimum flight test crew.
"And here we are on a
Sunday morning...in a place out here in the middle of nowhere and really neat
stuff is happening. It just looked beautiful," Witt said. "What
brings people to this desolate landscape on a Sunday morning in December is more
about what forced them here. Innovation by the private sector is a void
being filled because NASA deserted 90 percent of the sandbox and left it open
for us to fill."
A witness to the flight was
Dick Rutan who in December 1986 piloted the Voyager aircraft around the world
non-stop with the assistance of Jeana Yeager. He is brother of Burt Rutan,
Chief Technology Officer and Chairman Emeritus of Scaled Composites.
"It all went well...all
the big things worked well," Rutan told SPACE.com.
"Overall, 99 percent on target and everybody is really happy. You get an
airplane that's this weird and get it up and get it down...and it's safe on
deck."
The aircraft's
first flight means that Virgin Galactic expects 2009 to be an exciting period
of time, explained Will Whitehorn, President of Virgin Galactic.
"White KnightTwo
is the world's largest all carbon composite aviation vehicle," Whitehorn told SPACE.com.
"And of course she really is also a first stage space launch system capable of
carrying enormous weight to the edge of the atmosphere, training astronauts
with her zero to six G flying capability and being a scientific payload
platform at the same time."
"My
congratulations to a great team that worked very hard to get our first flight
flown before our Christmas break. We had a fun day at Mojave and now know we
have a solid performer that flies beautifully and will soon be moving on to its
tasks of launching Spaceships," added Burt Rutan.
Commercial space
program
In 2004, a smaller
WhiteKnight carrier plane cradled SpaceShipOne - a launch system that made
possible the first non-governmental piloted rocket ship to fly to the edge of
space. Back-to-back flights of SpaceShipOne that year earned the Scaled
Composites team, $10 million in Ansari X Prize money.
On Dec. 15, the New Mexico
Spaceport Authority (NMSA) announced that Spaceport
America has received its Record of Decision and license for vertical and
horizontal launch operations from the Federal Aviation Administration's Office
of Commercial Space Transportation.
In related news, a few days
later, the NMSA announced the selection of Gerald Martin Construction
Management of Albuquerque, New Mexico, to oversee the construction of Spaceport
America.
The governmental approvals
and the selection of the construction firm are the next steps along the road to
a fully operational commercial spaceport, noted NMSA Executive Director Steven
Landeene. "We are on track to begin construction in the first quarter of
2009, and have our facility completed as quickly as possible," Landeene
said in a press statement.
The NMSA is expected to
have a signed lease agreement with Virgin Galactic later this month.
The NMSA currently projects
vertical launch activity at Spaceport America to increase in 2009 and
construction to also begin next year on the terminal and hangar facility to be
utilized for Virgin Galactic operations. Those structures would be completed by
late 2010.
Leonard David has been
reporting on the space industry for more than four decades. He is past editor-in-chief
of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines and has
written for SPACE.com since 1999.
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