This week’s issue of Aviation Week features an article about White Knight, the carrier aircraft for SpaceShipOne. While SS1 is now hanging from the ceiling of the National Air and Space Museum, White Knight is still flying today, serving as “an ideal testbed for large, heavy payloads,” in the words of William B. Scott, the AvWeek writer who got to fly on White Knight recently. Much of the article discusses how White Knight served as a pathfinder for key SS1 systems, ranging from the environmental control system (ECS) to the landing gear actuators on White Knight (which are the same as the feathering system actuators on SS1). Flying White Knight is a little difficult because of the unique pattern of circular portholes: “It’s like flying inside a giant ‘whiffle ball’,” said Scaled Composites’ Doug Shane. Still, he notes, “The [SS1] feather was, relatively speaking, a genius idea, but the whole idea of using this airplane to solve the problems for SpaceShipOne was equally genius. It’s the best thing we did for the program.”

Brief notes about a few space tourism-related articles that appeared over the last few days:

• In this week’s issue of The Space Review, Alex Howerton offers an “appreciation” of last month’s X Prize Cup, emphasizing that despite the failure of any competitors to win prizes, the event is a big step forward for the NewSpace industry. “The sense of failure, if there is one, stems from the difference between our expectations and reality. We get impatient; we want to go to space now, and we can’t be bothered to wait until the system actually works.”
• Also in TSR, Sam Dinkin interviews Jessica French, who, besides being the daughter of Rocketplane Kistler president George French, worked for Virgin Galactic at its display at the EAA AirVenture show last year. Oh, and she also designed the logo for Dinkin’s skill game venture, SpaceShot.
• Shanghai Daily reports that an unnamed young Chinese businessman will be the country’s first space tourist, flying on Virgin Galactic in 2008.