SpaceShipTwo and White Knight Two Make Their Debut
So I woke up this morning, and as is the case twice a week, my AvWebFlash was waiting for my in my lovely little electronic mailbox. First story on the list was that Virgin Galactic has released the final designs of the vehicle that will, in the near future, take paying tourists on suborbital space flights. Now this is something that I’ve been following with a fair amount if interest ever since SpaceShipOne made its historical flight back in 2004.
SpaceShipTwo is fairly similar in appearance to its progenitor, save for the larger size necessary to carry six passengers and two pilots. But White Knight Two is substantially different, featuring two fuselages and four PW308A engines. In addition to its primary role of carrying SS2 to launch altitude, WK2 will also be used for training future passengers in a weightless environment prior to their SS2 flight. In fact, one fuselage will be an exact replica of SS2. This harkens back to the original project, in which White Knight had the same cockpit and controls as SpaceShipOne. The second fuselage is reported to be intended for carrying passengers of lesser means on flights into the stratosphere. It may not officially be spaceflights, but at WK2’s intended 60,000′ ceiling, it’s still about twice the altitude of your average airline flight.
WK2 is reportedly about 70% complete at Scaled Composite’s facility at Mojave Spaceport, with flight testing scheduled for this summer. And while there’s no official word, AvWeb editors believe that WK2 may well make its public debut by flying to EAA AirVenture in July. Well, I’ve been meaning to make the pilgrimage to that event sometime anyway… just what I need, another show to make it to this year. 
At a price of $200,000, the chance to fly up to the edge of space still can’t exactly be called cheap. However, it is still substantially less money than the $30 million some have paid to the Russian Space Agency to visit the ISS. So for people like me who have been fascinated by spaceflight for their entire life… well, we can hold out hope that some combination of dropping prices and increasing net worth could put us up into a black sky one day.