Tag: Scaled Composites

Stratolaunching to Nowhere : Update

Stratolaunching to Nowhere : Update

  To loosely paraphrase Khan Noonien Sing (the real one) Stratolaunch may no as wounded as the Wall Street Journal led us to believe. Here is a statement sent to Spacenews from Vulcan Aerospace made in response to yesterday’s story : Vulcan Aerospace remains steadfast in its mission to transform space transportation to low-Earth orbit […]

Posted in: Stratolaunch
First Images of Stratolaunch “Roc” Taking Shape

First Images of Stratolaunch “Roc” Taking Shape

Image credit KGET 17. Notice workers circled in red for scale. A series of still images from an upcoming tv news story about Stratolaunch Systems has been released, providing a rare glimpse into the project. The original Aviation Week article, with more images, is here. Background and Analysis One of the least visible launch development […]

Posted in: Stratolaunch
NTSB: Pilot Error a Major Factor in the Loss of SpaceShipTwo

NTSB: Pilot Error a Major Factor in the Loss of SpaceShipTwo

Only two days in to an investigation which was expected to take up to a year,  the National Safety Transportation Board team looking in to Friday’s Virgin Galactic crash at the Mojave spaceport has made a surprising discovery, one which overturns almost all of the early assumptions about what led to the disaster. Speaking at […]

Disaster in the Desert: Tragedy Strikes Virgin Galactic

Disaster in the Desert: Tragedy Strikes Virgin Galactic

Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground In the second major disaster to strike commercial space in the same week, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo broke up in the air above the Mojave desert shortly after igniting its new plastic compound based hybrid motor in what would have been its first powered test flight. […]

Virgin Galactic: More Delays, More Opportunities

Virgin Galactic: More Delays, More Opportunities

Image Credit Virgin Galactic Confirming a schedule slip which comes as no surprise, Virgin Galactic is now estimating that the first passenger flight (with founder Richard Branson aboard) will not take place until February or March of 2015. 2015.  The comments from the flamboyant businessman and adventurer came during an appearance with David Letterman on […]

Posted in: NASA, NewSpace, Space Tourism
Northrop Grumman Announces its DARPA XS-1 SpacePlane Team

Northrop Grumman Announces its DARPA XS-1 SpacePlane Team

Image Credit : Northrop Grumman 2014-08-19T12:00:00-0700 REDONDO BEACH, Calif. – Aug. 19, 2014 – Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) with Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic is developing a preliminary design and flight demonstration plan for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Experimental Spaceplane XS-1 program. A photo accompanying this release is available at: http://media.globenewswire.com/noc/mediagallery.html?pkgid=27176. XS-1 […]

One Fast Step, Virgin Galactic Breaks the Sound Barrier with SpaceShipTwo

One Fast Step, Virgin Galactic Breaks the Sound Barrier with SpaceShipTwo

The suborbital space transportation industry took one of its biggest steps to date this morning, with the first powered test flight of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, the complete details of which are included in the press release below.  Coming as it does in the same month which saw Orbital Sciences complete the first launch of the Antares booster,   and looking […]

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