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…

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.”

To update my earlier post, I spoke briefly yesterday with Eric Anderson of Space Adventures to try and clarify any apparent contradictions between the company’s announcements and statements by the Russian space agency Roskosmos. Anderson said that Perminov’s statement that he had “no information about such plans” was reference to reports about Sergey Brin flying to the station; Space Adventures, in fact, has not formally informed the Russians about Brin since he had not signed up for a specific flight yet. Perminov was apparently responding to some reports that Brin was going to be the next space tourist, which is not what Space Adventures announced last week.

As for the “space tourism will be temporarily suspended” statement, Anderson said Perminov was referring to the period when the station crew size increases to six, which will make it more difficult to find a seat for a commercial passenger. “I’m not prepared to say it’s impossible,” he said, “but it is significantly more difficult.” Space Adventures does still have another flight opportunity in the spring of 2009, Anderson confirmed, but has not announced a customer for that mission.

One other note: at the press conference last week, Brin was announced as the first member of Space Adventures’ “Orbital Mission Explorers Circle”. Anderson said that “within one hour” of that announcement, he had signed up the second member of that group, but did not identify that individual.

An article in Saturday’s edition of Florida Today reports that NASA “was among the last to know” about Space Adventures’ plans for a dedicated Soyuz flight to the ISS in late 2011. Of course, NASA didn’t need to be consulted prior to the announcement, so that’s not too surprising, although NASA and the other international partners in the ISS will need to approve the overall mission plan, just as they do any major developments in the assembly and operation of the mission.

A more serious issue, though, is whether the Russian space agency, Roskosmos, is on board. The Space Adventures press release about the mission includes a quote from a Roskosmos official, Alexey B. Krasnov, who says that the agency is “very pleased to continue working with Space Adventures into the foreseeable future.” However, in a statement published Thursday on the Roskosmos web site (in Russian), the head of the space agency, Anatoly Perminov, said he was unaware of any plans for sending additional tourists to the station, citing in particular Google co-founder Sergey Brin. “I have no information about such plans,” he said, according to a machine translation of the release. He added that as the station’s crew complement is expanded from three to six people, starting next year, “space tourism will be temporarily suspended”. The Roskosmos statement, though, doesn’t specifically mention the dedicated mission, or the possibility that the “temporarily suspended” period might stretch only from early 2009 (the last available seat on a regular Soyuz taxi flight) until the planned dedicated mission in late 2011.

There’s more discussion about these conflicting statements at RussianSpaceWeb.com, while Flight’s Rob Coppinger expresses his own general skepticism about the announcement. I contacted Space Adventures on Friday to get some clarification on the nature of their agreement with Roskosmos, any why Perminov might think there’s no such deal, but have not received a response from the company.

Here are some of the key items from this morning’s press conference held by Space Adventures about their future plans (see their press release for some additional details):

• The first major announcement was that the company has reached an agreement with Roskosmos, the Russian space agency, for a dedicated Soyuz flight to the ISS in the second half of 2011. There will be a single cosmonaut pilot and two seats available for sale by Space Adventures.
• That flight, and potentially others to follow, is in addition to the seats they have on the regular Soyuz taxi flights to the ISS this fall (for Richard Garriott) and next spring (for a person yet to be announced). Going forward the company wants to do at least one flight to the ISS per year for as long as the station remains in operation.
• The second major announcement was the creation of an “Orbital Mission Explorers Circle”. People who join this group pay a deposit for a future orbital flight and gain preferential access to seats on future flights, or can sell their reservation to someone else.
• There will be six founding members of this Explorers Circle, the first of whom is Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google. Brin, like other founding members, is paying a $5-million deposit. Brin was not present at the press conference, but there was a short statement by him where he said he was a “big believer” in the commercial development of space.
• Space Adventures is shying away from the label of being a “space tourism company. “What we’re doing is opening the frontier,” Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures, said. “This is private space exploration.” This includes, as a part of it, tourism, he said, but only as part of a larger vision of the company.
• Garriott, taking a short break from training to attend the press conference in New York, said he is not terribly concerned about the recent Soyuz reentry problems, although he said he will be “avidly” reading the report on the April ballistic reentry when it’s completed in about a month.
• Peter Diamandis said that Zero G, the parabolic flight company that he co-founded and was acquired earlier this year by Space Adventures (another company Diamandis helped found), has made 200 commercial flights to date, flying over 5,000 people. He wants to ramp that up to 10,000 people a year within a couple of years, and eventually reach 100,000 people a year. Zero G will soon start making $1 million in changes to one of its two 727 aircraft so it can be used for NASA flights under terms of a contract announced earlier this year.
• Anderson said he is a “huge fan” of suborbital spaceflight in general and Virgin Galactic in particular. Space Adventures, he said, is interested in partnering with one or more suborbital companies to sell flights, but will wait until there are vehicles flying before making any announcements in that area.

An intriguing short item in today’s San Jose Mercury News about the Space Adventures press conference later today:

Space tourists are getting their own ride. Space Adventures, a Virginia company that arranges passage for wealthy explorers to ride on Russian Soyuz rockets to the International Space Station, plans to buy a Soyuz flight all its own in 2011, with the option of buying more.

A new investor is likely to occupy one of the two available seats on Space Adventures’ 2011 flight: Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google. He made a $5 million investment in the company that will serve as a deposit on a future flight.

Update: The New York Times has a more detailed report this morning, but with the same essential details.

Brin clearly has an interest in space: he spoke by video at the unveiling of the Google Lunar X Prize last September, and Google has a close relationship with NASA’s Ames Research Center. And for someone of Brin’s wealth, the $25-30 million (or so) needed for an orbital flight is veritable pocket change. We’ll find out in a few hours if it’s true…

In an announcement whose timing was a bit surprising but also not entirely unexpected, Scaled Composites revealed that Burt Rutan would be stepping down as president and would be replaced by Doug Shane, who had been vice president of Scaled and also served as a test pilot for the company. Rutan will remain with the company as CTO and “chairman emeritus”, positions that Scaled said in the statement will allow him to focus on the company’s creative and entrepreneurial strengths.

Rutan’s long-term future with Scaled had been in question given the health problems he had in the last several months (although he appeared in good health when he spoke at the International Space Development Conference in Washington last week), as well as the acquisition of the company by Northrop Grumman. “I suggested this change to our organizational structure because I want to focus on developing our talented, innovative team and ensuring we continue to provide our customers the creative technical approaches that only Scaled offers,” Rutan said in the Scaled statement. “I am successfully recovering from about 8 months of significant heart health challenges, and with this move look forward to many more years of fun here at Scaled.”

Space Adventures sent out a media advisory yesterday announcing a press conference planned for Wednesday, June 11, in New York. The press conference will reveal the identity of a “notable future orbital client” as well as “significant announcements regarding new orbital spaceflight planning”, including a “vision for the next decade”. Richard Garriott, currently in training for a Soyuz flight this fall, will be at the press conference, along with Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson and Peter Diamandis.

During the Q&A session of his ISDC speech Thursday, Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn was asked about thoughts about XCOR Aerospace, who announced plans for its own suborbital vehicle, Lynx, in March:

XCOR is a company I respect, but with respect to them, they’re not building a spaceship. They’re building basically a high-altitude MiG equivalent. They’re building something that you can strap in and go up to 37 miles. You won’t get your astronaut wings but you will see the curvature of the earth. That will be an exciting project, but the problem is that it’s not a space project, and I think it’s been a little bit wrong to call it that.

Whitehorn added that Virgin’s customers are paying $200,000 for a complete experience that includes floating around the cabin and flying beyond the 100-kilometer boundary of space, something that the Mark 1 version of Lynx won’t be able to offer.

Whitehorn did say that XCOR is a “clever” company that is able to build Lynx, and “if the price of it was cheap enough, it’s the kind of thing we would buy.” He added, though, that XCOR’s $100,000 initial ticket price was not cheap enough. “I would say to XCOR to keep on doing what you’re doing, but you’ll have to get the price of that well, well down relative to the SpaceShipTwo launch price for it to work successfully.”

The Personal Spaceflight Federation issued a press release yesterday about a new study with some financial metrics about the personal spaceflight industry. The numbers are surprisingly large: the study found that the industry generated $268 million in revenue in 2007, up from $165 million in 2006, with $1.2 billion in total investment to date as well as 1,227 employees of various firms.

All the release says that the revenue numbers include three categories: “personal spaceflight services; personal spaceflight-related hardware sales, hardware development, and support services; and, non-personal spaceflight revenue of personal spaceflight organizations”. More details will (presumably) be released when the study is presented Saturday at the ISDC; I suspect that much of the revenue comes from that last category, particularly for PSF members like Scaled Composites and SpaceX, which have significant business activity not directly related to personal spaceflight.