Virgin Galactic has unveiled a SpaceShipTwo (SS2) design, created by Scaled Composites, that harks back to the NASA/USAF Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar glider of the 1960s, while Scaled's carrier aircraft, White Knight II (WK2) has been given a twin-fuselage configuration.
To be launched on a Lockheed Martin Titan III rocket, Dyna-Soar was for hypersonic flight research but the programme was cancelled before the first vehicle was completed. Some of its subsystems were used in later X-15 flight research and Dyna-Soar became a testbed for advanced technologies that contributed to projects, including the Space Shuttle.
Virgin Galactic's commercial operations will now start from New Mexico's Spaceport America in 2010 and not from Mojave air and space port in California, as originally planned, but the WK2, SS2 launch system will be test flown by Scaled at the Californian port.
At its 23 January press conference at the American Museum of Natural History in New York city Virgin Galactic described SS2 as using the same basic technology, construction and design as its predecessor SpaceShipOne (SS1), as 100% composite and twice as large as the $10 million X-Prize winning vehicle, SS1.
It will also be used for smaller, low orbit satellite launches.
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