Space Tourism One Step Closer
The XCOR Lynx - Rockets you up, glides you down
A company called XCOR Aerospace has announced that it will be offering rides into suborbital space starting in 2010. This is the same outfit that experienced a highly publicized rocket explosion on a test stand last July 26th which killed two employees. XCOR is the primary rocket engine contractor for Virgin Galactic, the consortium that grew out of the Ansari X-Prize quest to be the first private comapny to demonstrate a pratical, reusable, and manned aircraft that could fly above 100km (commonly accepted as the edge of space) which it achieved in 2004 with a craft dubbed SpaceShipOne.
Virgin Galactic also plans to start carrying paying customers on SpaceShipTwo, now in development, and expected to make its first flight in late 2010. Tickets on this 21st century hot rod will start at $200,000. The XCOR “Lynx” will be for the budget-minded space tourist, with the one seat next to the pilot going for a mere $100,000 for a half-hour ride to a place where you can really see the curvature of the Earth, the misty, glowing envelope of the atmosphere, and non-twinkling stars.
An acquaintance of mine who knows an employee at an Air Force test facility (who have been working on rocket motors since before the Apollo program) says that there is some concern among his co-workers over the non-traditional methods used at the XCOR facility. My father developed rocket fuels and tested them at Aerojet in Pasadena in the 1950s, where he said that people were killed or injured with such alarming regularity that he finally quit before statistics caught up with him, so it’s probably an accepted fact that rocket science is a fairly dangerous occupation. The personnel at Aerojet were not nailed by explosions so much as they were squashed when the thick walls they were hiding behind were knocked over by the blast.
I wonder how long it will be before some passenger on one of these amazing new rocket planes will snap pictures of something unexplainable? (You probably wondered how I was going to get UFOs in this post.) 
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Mar 28 2008 
March 28th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Well, it would need more than sme pretty computer renders —that even I could make— to give away $100,000 to any company, and put my ass on the line in the process.
On the other hand, I’m almost convinced SOMETHING out of the ordinary will be seen during the maiden voyages of the first commercial spaceships, although undoubtedly it will be easily shunned by the regular skeptics as perception errors commited by un-trained civilians.
…Unless it is something EXTREMELY out of the ordinary, that is
March 28th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
You don’t have $100,000, Greg?!? I thought you guys wot writes those books about UFOs woz only in it for the profits, in’ it?!
;)
March 28th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
RPJ,
The renderings are to get people excited about the prospects. You and I will wait until the thing has been flying a couple of years (and we stumble upon 100 grand.)
Actually, I’m surprised that someone hasn’t taken space videos and subjected them to the “Haiti” treatment.
March 28th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
uv777bk,
I keep thinking I should have gone into real estate or become a rock star. This UFO business isn’t going like it should!
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:15 am
What a set up. You give them 100,000-200,000 and then they blow you up! Even if it never works, that one time they will probably be able to get quite a large amount of cash. I would definitely wait quite a few years for them to work out the “kinks.”
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:01 pm
jeanniesbottle,
I suspect that it cost them a few million dollars to get things off the ground, so to speak, and probably a several thousand each time the thing goes up for fuel, paying the pilot, renting the airport, insurance, paying employees, upkeep on the ship etc. Still, the profit might be pretty darn good once they get the routine down and show a good safety record, as you said.