Mojave company receives second FAA reusable rocket license (XCor Aerospace)

Bakersfield Californian ^ | 4/23/04 | Andrew Bridges - AP

[NormsRevenge]

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A California company received on Friday the second ever federal license to fly a manned rocket on suborbital flights.

The Federal Aviation Administration granted XCor Aerospace Inc. the license for its Sphinx, a rocket-powered plane that is still on the drawing board.

The license covers up to 35 flights of the yet-to-be-built plane, which should test operation and propulsion concepts for an even later craft that could ferry paying passengers on suborbital flights, according to the FAA. The license is good through 2006.

Company chief executive officer Jeff Greason said the license would allow the company to attract investors to the $2.5 million to $3 million project. With the additional funding, the concept plane could be flying within a year, he said.

The two-person, reusable rocket plane is not being designed to fly to space, nor is it intended to be a competitor for the X Prize, he added.

The $10 million prize will go to the first private effort to launch a manned craft to an altitude of 63 miles - generally considered the edge of space - twice within two weeks. The craft must be able to carry three people.

The FAA granted the first suborbital rocket license earlier this month to another Mojave company, Scaled Composites. Scaled Composites is an X Prize competitor and has carried out at least two test flights of its SpaceShipOne.

Xcor previously has flown a modified Long-EZ kit plane powered by twin rocket engines as part of its effort to develop a reusable rocket plane to fly to space.

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On the Net: http://www.xcor.com/

[NormsRevenge]

[NormsRevenge]

[BenLurkin]

Ping.

[GeronL]

Their pic is cool... but they still have to build the thing, they're way behind the other team.. Scaled Composites...

[KevinDavis]

I don't think that Xcor is part of the X-Prize.. But a good development....

[GeronL]

Are you sure?? Cuz their website is pretty cool.

[KevinDavis]

Go to xprize.org and you will not find their name as the list of competitors.

[GeronL]

$10M is nothing compared to what they're going to be spending on that space plane anyhow.... and they had a very very late start. They're at least a year or two behind Scaled Composites...

[NormsRevenge]

Correct, It is Not an X Prize project but holds promise.

[KevinDavis]

That is true, however, Xcor is going to make a bigger impact than Burt. Burt is going to win, Xcor is going to be a leader, imho.

[GeronL]

Is Burts brother still test-piloting for XCor??

[KevinDavis]

Yes.......

[DoughtyOne]

Not taking a position on who's going to win, that sucker look pretty nice. I'll take one...

[GeronL]

They gotta build one first, you could settle for a rocket plane until then??

[DoughtyOne]

By the time they get this built, I still won't be able to afford one, so I do have time on my side... lol

[GeronL]

You cannot afford a Sphinx... but can you afford an EZ Rocket? The worlds only privately owned, man-rated rocket-powered aircraft??

[GeronL]

How many times have you flown?
The EZ-Rocket has flown 15 times to date. The first 13 flights were conducted at our base of operations at the Mojave Civilian Flight Test Center in Mojave, CA. Flights 14 and 15 were performed in front of a very large crowd of airshow attendees at the EAA AirVenture fly-in at Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

If you were wondering....

[NormsRevenge]

http://www.xcor.com/ez.html

The engine bay of the EZ-Rocket exposed

[GeronL]

did I forget the link??

There are almost no electronics in an EZ Rocket... that is amazing too.

[DoughtyOne]

I've been watching the EZ Rocket progress here on the forum. I'm not a pilot. My comment that "I wanted one..." was meant to say that I just like the way it looks, not much else.

I've flown a lot commercially, but that doesn't count when it comes to these types of aircraft.

I may not be a pilot, but the progress toward commercial access to space couldn't seem much slower to a guy who thought we'd have conquered such matters at least a decade ago.

Nobody was much more excited than I when Reagan first talked of a space plane in the mid 1980s. I followed the promise of one forecast after another, which never panned out, to my sorrow.