As I mentioned in an earlier post, the status of SpaceShipTwo (SS2) did not come up in any of the public presentations during Monday’s event in Mojave. I was able to eventually track down Burt Rutan and ask him what the status of the program was, particularly after he said to another interviewer that the investigation into last year’s accident was wrapping up. “Yes, it’s over, and there’s a report,” he said. “With our new owner [Northrop Grumman] and with the constraints we’re under it’s difficult to get things released, but we’re in the process of doing that.”

Rutan confirmed that the investigation was causing “a lot” of design changes for SS2. “We have not worked on SpaceShipTwo in a year,” he said, “because there’s a possibility that the propulsion system would be markedly different and we’d be building things that we would have to scrap.” He declined to comment on whether, in fact, SS2 will have a different propulsion system than originally planned, saying that details about any changes would be announced “in a different venue.”

I’ve posted to Flickr an initial set of images from the White Knight 2 rollout for your enjoyment. There’s a lot more from where those came from that I’ll be posting later, but these give you at least a little glimpse of what the event was like.

I was in Mojave earlier today for the White Knight 2 rollout event at Scaled Composites (I just got back a little while ago and am uploading images taken during the event right now.) Initial takes:

• White Knight 2 is a striking aircraft. It looks just as good - if not better - in person as the illustrations of the airplane earlier this year suggested.
• There were no groundbreaking announcements at the event. Lots of little news, like a pilot exchange program whereby Virgin America airline pilots will get to train to fly WK2 and SS2, and that Virgin Galactic is up to 270 customers.
• As in earlier speeches, Virgin Galactic’s Will Whitehorn played up the alternative uses of WK2, including as a launch platform for unmanned rockets for low-cost satellite launches.
• During the event itself virtually nothing was said about SS2 itself. Afterwards I asked Burt Rutan about the status, and he said that the report about the accident just over one year ago that claimed the lives of three Scaled employees should be released “soon”. He also said they had not done any work on the vehicle since the accident, to avoid having to undo any of it pending the outcome of the investigation.

More details to come, but I wanted to give you some highlights first…

Monday morning Virgin Galactic will be rolling out White Knight 2, the carrier aircraft that will be used to launch SpaceShipTwo, at Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The aircraft won’t be flying tomorrow, by all accounts: Virgin’s Will Whitehorn said in May that test flights of WK2 would likely begin in August or September. Still, Virgin is hyping up the event, even finding a way to tie its space tourism venture with a terrestrial airline: press and invited guests will be flown to Mojave from LAX on a Virgin America jet early Monday, and there may be other announcements tomorrow linking the two ventures.

Indeed, as the AP reports this weekend, “The last time there was this level of buzz in the high desert north of Los Angeles was in 2004″ for the SpaceShipOne suborbital flights. (That’s a statement that could be perceived as something of an indictment of the lack of visible progress in the nearly four years since SS1 won the Ansari X Prize.)

Meanwhile, Virgin Galactic continues to sign up customers, although one nationality is missing, The Sunday Mail reports: Scots. That’s particularly disappointing to Whitehorn, himself Scottish. “It really surprises me but there is still time before the first flight takes off,” he told the paper. One other item of note: according to the article Virgin has now sold 258 tickets for its suborbital flights, although it’s not clear from the article if they have collected the full $200,000 from all of those customers. Another 600 are ready to pay when commercial flights begin.

Unfortunately for one potential customer, it will be a long time before Virgin is able to fly people to the Moon. Sorry, “Madge”.

On Friday morning the Rocket Racing League held a press conference by telecon to discuss the company and their plans to exhibit and fly at EAA AirVenture this week in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. RRL president and CEO Granger Whitelaw provided a basic overview about the company and its plans going forward. While exhibition flights of RRL vehicles are slated to begin at Oshkosh, the first formal competitive races are not planned until late 2009 or early 2010; Whitelaw said there was a 12-month lead time to set up the TV deals for the races, and that the league wanted to avoid going head-to-head with major fall sports events, like the NFL.

The big question, though, is whether both the XCOR- and Armadillo-powered vehicles will fly at Oshkosh. “We’re going to have both vehicles there,” Whitelaw said. “Whether or not the Armadillo-powered vehicle flies is in question right now.” The XCOR-powered vehicle, which will be operated by the Bridenstine Racing Team, does have its “pink slip” from the FAA allowing it to fly at Oshkosh, but the Armadillo vehicle does not. “Don’t ask me why, because it’s beyond me,” he said. “The plane’s been ready to fly for weeks.”

After Oshkosh the RRL does have a number of exhibition events planned for this fall. A slide during Whitelaw’s presentation included the Reno Air Races in September, the Nellis AFB show in Las Vegas in November, and the X Prize Cup. Wait, how is that last one possible since there won’t be a formal X Prize Cup event this year, only the Lunar Lander Challenge (LLC) competition that will not be open to the public? “There is another event that is X Prize-driven,” he said, apparently referring to the LLC. “So I think we’re either going to fly there, or we’re going to have our own standalone event in Las Cruces in late October or early November.”

My apologies for the lack of activity here of late; I have been juggling work and other projects. The good news is that you will see activity here ramping up in the days to come, in part because of events like the White Knight 2 rollout and Rocket Racing League flights at Oshkosh next week, but also to reflect other activity in the field. Also, look for some changes in the site design in the very near future as well.