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…