Printable Version of Topic

Click here to view this topic in its original format

Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Manned Spaceflight _ XCOR Announcement March 26, 2008

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Mar 26 2008, 03:12 PM

XCOR AEROSPACE SUBORBITAL VEHICLE TO FLY WITHIN TWO YEARS
New vehicle called the Lynx

Los Angeles, March 26, 2008 – A small California aerospace company today unveiled a new suborbital spaceship that will provide affordable front-seat rides to the edge of space for the millions of people who want to buy a ticket.

The company, XCOR Aerospace, of Mojave, CA, announced that its two-seat Lynx suborbital spaceship will carry people or payloads to where they will experience weightlessness and see the stars above and the Earth and its atmosphere below. This will launch XCOR into the emerging space tourism market, estimated at over a half-billion dollars.

The Lynx will offer affordable access to space for individuals, researchers and educators,” said XCOR CEO Jeff Greason. “Future versions of Lynx will offer ever-improving capabilities for scientific and engineering research and commercial applications. ....

http://www.xcor.com/press-releases/2008/08-03-26_Lynx_suborbital_vehicle.html

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Mar 26 2008, 03:23 PM

Congratualtions to Jeff Greason and his team on reaching this threshhold.

I had the chance to have dinner with him last fall and tour his facilities at Mojave. While Burt Rutan is one of my all-time heroes, I really get the feeling that it is XCOR who will crack open the suborbital market in an affordable way. Jeff wouldn't share any of their closely guarded figures with me, but he is convinced that they will be able to fly passengers for a far, far lower price than Virgin Galactic's initial $200,000.

On top of all that Jeff is such a likeable guy. He has an amazing story. The guy was literally like all of us, just a fan of space travel sitting on the sidelines. He's an EE and was a project manager for Intel when he decided to make his dream happen and went out and cobbled together investors for the (now defunct) Roton project. After that he started XCOR.

I really look forward to seeing Jeff and XCOR succeed.

Posted by: djellison Mar 26 2008, 03:25 PM

I loved XCOR's long video about what they were doing from a few years ago. It was fantastic. There are some special guys there, I can't wait to see what they can do.

(and their photo library is a great resource of rocket exhausts for animators )

Doug