The Rocket Racing League’s first racer flew again at the EAA AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on Saturday. This time the weather was better than Friday, when a storm encroached on the area; Saturday featured clear skies and light winds, so the Rocket Racer, again piloted by Rick Searfoss, flew a more ambitious series of aerobatic maneuvers. (More pictures to come.)

One minor difference outside of the flight was that the second Rocket Racer, which had been on display at the RRL exhibit, was not there on Saturday. The vehicle is being towed back to Texas, where it will perform a test flight on Tuesday for the FAA. I did not see anyone from Armadillo around the exhibit either day, although one person had another commitment: founder John Carmack was at the QuakeCon tourament in Dallas this weekend, where he briefly talked about Armadillo with the Dallas Morning News. Carmack noted that the venture is now making a small profit after “eight years of being a money pit.” Carmack is spending 20 hours a week on Armadillo, on top of 40 hours at id Software; he said Armadillo is considering hiring a “full-time chief executive” in the near future.

I was at the EAA AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on Friday and saw the Rocket Racing League’s first vehicle fly during an afternoon performance. I have a collection of images from the day, including both the flight and some items at their exhibit, including the second racer (which, RRL officials said, will begin flying next week.) More insights to come.

On Friday Scaled Composites issued an accident investigation update about last July’s propulsion system test accident that killed three company employees and injured three others. The statement does not indicate a cause of the accident, and notes that a Cal OSHA investigation that wrapped up in January did not determine a cause. The statement does note that Scaled is making a number of changes, including:

• Conducting increased compatibility testing between N2O and any materials that contact it in the tank and eliminate incompatible materials in the flow path;
• Revising cleaning procedures to further minimize the risk of contaminants in the system;
• Replacing the composite liner in the N2O tank with a metal tank liner;
• Diluting N2O vapor in the tank with Nitrogen or another inert gas to decrease its volatility and/or act as a pressurant;
• Designing additional safety systems for the N2O tank to minimize the danger due to tank overpressure; for example, a burst disk feature; and
• Increasing the amount of testing during the development program to demonstrate that these design changes, and any improvements to system components, prevent the sequence of events
  that led to the accident.

The statement does appear to indicate that Scaled is continuing with a nitrous hybrid propulsion system for SS2.

Well, someone is not too happy with the concept of personal spaceflight. In a letter to the editor in Saturday’s Washington Post, C. Anthony Altar of Garrett Park, Maryland, uses the WhiteKnightTwo rollout to complain that personal spaceflight is “selfish excess” that should be prohibited. Such travelers, or, rather, “eco-hypocrites”, “burn toluene and other pollutants” on their flights (not sure about the toluene, but no matter). “We cannot accept a narcissism that trumps common sense and pollutes the fragile atmosphere the rest of us must breathe,” he argues. “Public outrage can mobilize our government to outlaw this kind of activity.”

Dr. Altar (yes, he is President and Chief Scientific Officer at Psychiatric Genomics) is more than a little off base here. Yes, suborbital spaceflights will likely release some degree, however small, of pollutants—many human activities do. However, the small size of the vehicles, short burn time, and relatively low flight rate means that such flights will have a miniscule footprint on the environment compared to commercial aviation. Perhaps if he is really concerned about protecting the “fragile atmosphere”, he can try to “mobilize out government to outlaw” commercial aviation.

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.